


Changing Times

by darthneko



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: scifibigbang, Gen, Mystery, Post-War, Psychic, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-12
Updated: 2010-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War has isolated countries, psychics and mages are commonplace, and aliens are still a hidden secret. Jack Harkness, immortal engineered relic left over from the Great War, heads the understaffed Cardiff branch of Torchwood. Used to dealing with riff raff and flotsam from the local Rift, Torchwood Three is unprepared to have to cope with a growing series of possibly alien murders throughout Cardiff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Totally unrepentantly AU. NOT the greater Doctor Who universe. Any and all errors are totally my own - I didn't give my fabulous beta enough time to do her amazing beta thing to the later half of it.

It had rained earlier in the day; the pavement underfoot was wet, reflective beneath the street lamps, and Jack cursed it and the Rift and the endless Welsh rain in a tired litany behind his clenched teeth as he splashed through the lingering puddles.

A flash of motion, black on black, caught in the corner of his eye off to the left. Suzie, he knew without turning to look, taking up position on the opposite corner, and a muted click in his earpiece at almost the same moment was the signal from Ianto who had taken point around the back of the warehouse. Jack breathed out, peering cautiously around the corner. It was well past quitting hour and the docks would be - should be, _ought_ to be - quiet and deserted, but their quarry could make use of that just as well as they could. Finding nothing, he retreated back to the safety of the wall, letting his shoulder rest against it as he reached up to tap his earpiece on, his voice no louder than needed to carry to the mic that rested against his jaw. "Tosh? Toshiko, sweetheart, talk to me. Where's our bogey?"

It was Owen who answered, the irascible doctor's usual sharp bark hushed into something smoother that he reserved for his work and not his coworkers. "Two piers down, Jack, and holding steady. You should have 'im easy if you come at it from the back."

"Music to my ears," Jack replied, grinning. "Ianto?"

"On it, sir," came the immediate response and Jack's grin turned sharper. He was, he reflected grimly, going to have to swallow his pride at some point and write Yvonne Hartman a thank you letter for sending the younger man to serve out a tour of duty with Jack's team in Cardiff. If he was very lucky the shock alone of receiving it might shave a year off the damned woman's life.

He caught Suzie's eye with a brief gesture, signaling her to take the left, and indicated his own path with a jerk of his chin. Suzie nodded and the light reflected dully off of the silver chased barrel of her pistol as she raised it before slipping around the corner. Jack took another breath, checked his own gun by feel, and followed after.

If they had been lucky it would have been a routine pickup, nothing but a quick jaunt out and back. Luck, however, had been in short supply all that week which is why it surprised Jack not one bit when Owen's voice caught them up halfway to the target. "Shit - Jack! It's moving, Jack, doing a runner on us."

"Not what I wanted to hear!" Jack ground out, abandoning stealth to break into a jog. "Tosh, get me a direction!"

The sharper thud of Suzie's boots echoed back to him in distorted bursts from the walls around them. Jack swore and lengthened his stride, his voice harsh in his own ears through the mic. "Toshiko..."

"Straight ahead, moving west," Owen said sharply, "keep going but pick up the pace!"

"Let's go, people," Jack called, and Suzie's steps blended with his own, splash and slap on the pavement, Ianto's echoing dimly from the right. If they could just come in from both sides... "Ianto, can you - whoah!"

The last was an involuntary exclamation as he rounded the corner and skidded to a halt, where lamplight glinted bright off of metal, and suddenly the night was filled with the sharp sound of cocked guns. "Whoah!" Jack repeated, bringing his free hand up, palm out, even as his gun hand remained steady. The two barrels trained on him didn't waver, their owners grim faces and scowling. "Alright, hold on, let's not anybody do anything stupid."

Suzie slid into place beside him with a low curse and two against two was better odds but Jack was far from in the mood. The two men they'd stumbled on were dressed like dock workers, rough trousers and worn coats, but the guns in their hands were well shined pieces and their aim was steady. There was something dark and shapeless tumbled in a heap on the paving stones behind them; goods or a body, Jack didn't really want to know - the districts around the docks dealt in both. "Think we're having a bit of a misunderstanding, here," Jack said, trying for a companionably calm tone.

The shorter and darker of the two spat out the tail end of a cigarette butt. "Only 'misunderstanding' is what you think you're doing on our ground," he said, deep gravel voiced and pure Welsh vowels. "This area's not for the likes of you."

"That," Jack replied hastily, "is where we're having the misunderstanding. Look - my name's Jack Harkness. The lady is Suzie Costello, and I _assure_ you gentlemen I have absolutely cleared hunting rights on these docks with your boss. It's nothing to do with any of you and I'm sorry to barge in on you like this, but we're sort of in a hurry. Can we talk about this later?"

"Can talk about it until the sun comes up," the other man shot back; "big words, big gent, doesn't mean a damned thing."

"Not if I blow your head off," Suzie growled under her breath, but Jack waved her back with a short gesture.

"We _really_ don't have time for this," he sighed. "Fine - you want to ask your boss? Go ahead. Call the Spider. Tell him Harkness is hunting. I guarantee you he's going to tell you to get the fuck out of my way and forget you ever saw us."

It made them hesitate, the shorter man's frown deepening and the taller man darting quick, dubious glances between his superior and Jack. Jack held his breath, trying to _will_ them into compliance, but in the end he didn't have to; a shadow detached itself from behind the men, resolving into a familiar crisp black suit and a black polished pistol. "Problem, sir?"

The two dock men jumped, the taller whirling to track the new threat, but three against two were odds anyone could calculate. Jack grinned, sharp and dry. "Nothing we can't handle, Ianto. Now, gentlemen, I'm going to ask you politely one more time - get out of the way. We've got no business with you and I'd like to get on with our real job."

There was one more beat of hesitation and then the shorter man raised his gun off of Jack with a growled curse. "As you like, then. It's lies, and the Spider'll have your guts for netting."

"He's welcome to them," Jack replied sweetly, "and you can give him my very fondest regards. Now if you'll excuse us, gentlemen - have a delightful rest of your evening and let's all hope we _don't_ see each other again later. Suzie, Ianto..." He swept his team ahead of him with a smooth gesture, letting Suzie's quick steps led the way as they left the dock men behind.

"Thought you cleared this," Suzie said sharply, keeping her voice low.

"I _did_," Jack protested. "But the Spider's got a lot more people than our merry little group and I'm guessing nobody sent the memo around to Mutt and Ugly back there." He sucked in an irritated breath, blowing it back out through his teeth. "Took you long enough, Ianto."

"Sorry." Always the perfect picture of professionalism, it was hard to tell from tone whether the younger man meant it or not. "Took me a minute to realize you weren't behind me any more." He shrugged shortly, his own feelings working out through the sharp motion of his shoulders where it didn't display in face or voice. "Lost the target."

"Shit." Jack slowed their pace, tapping his mic back on. "Tosh? Toshiko, baby, sweetheart, tell me you've got good news for me..."

"Hold on a sec," Owen snapped. They could hear him in the background, voice low and urgent. "Tosh, honey, come on, you have to _concentrate_... no, baby, no, I don't care about that scanner, that was this morning, come on, it's Jack you've gotta focus on, there's a good girl..." and then, sharp and loud, "Got it! Headed back into the city - two streets up, turn right!"

"There's my brilliant girl!" Jack crowed and they were off, falling into place with an easy familiarity born of too many other hunts on other dark and wet nights until Jack sometimes wondered when it had become almost _normal_.

They found their target just beyond the docks proper and it had to be one of the uglier ones they'd had of late - seen beneath the street lamps it reminded Jack of nothing so much as a bizarre cross between a toad and a marmoset, flat faced with slick, oily mottled fur and too-large eyes that could never be mistaken for human despite the perfectly normal coat it had pulled over itself. Worse than it's face, however, were the thin, grotesque fingers, which were wrapped around what had to be the trigger of something large and entirely too deadly looking.

"Drop it!" he yelled, but it was more of a distraction than any real hope the think spoke a recognizable language - _Look at me_, he thought desperately as the thing swung the ugly muzzle of the heavy weapon towards him. _Look at me, just keep looking at me..._

Jack had just enough time to think _yes_ and _fuck, this is going to hurt_ as the thing's long, bony finger twitched and a sharp, teeth rattling hum powered up from the weapon before two shots rung out in near tandem - _bang!_ and then _bang!_ \- from both sides and the creature dropped like a rock, blood splashing up black in the darkness from two head shots that tore through its skull like paper.

"...Well," Jack said a beat later, when he felt as though he could breathe again, "that wasn't one of our neater efforts."

"Sorry, sir," Ianto replied crisply and this time Jack was positive the other man didn't mean it one bit. "Can't always be spotless."

"I was thinking maybe a little less trigger happy," Jack sighed. "You know, ask questions first? It wouldn't hurt us to have new intel."

Ianto stepped carefully around the thing -- it looked considerably less intimidating in a heap on the pavement -- and the look he directed at the older man managed to be both serious and disbelieving all at once. "Point, sir," he allowed, "but it was aiming a weapon at you."

Jack scrubbed a hand across his face. "And we both know how much _that_ means, Mr. Jones."

The younger man's mouth pulled thin. "Sir, Torchwood field operative rules state..."

"Yes, yes, yes," Jack interrupted testily. The adrenaline of the final burst of the chase was draining away quickly and in its place he was twice as aware of the damp chill and late hour. "Hello," he added, raising a hand in a wry wave, "Harkness the Eternal? Ring a bell? I'm pretty sure Yvonne wrote a waiver into the rules just for me."

He could swear Ianto sniffed slightly. "That is the Director's perogative, I'm sure, but I haven't seen it in writing."

It broke an unexpected laugh from Jack. "And that, ladies and deceased aliens, is why we all love you." He clapped the younger man on the shoulder and couldn't resist momentarily palming the other man's cheek, a gesture which Ianto stoically endured. "So damned cute! More by-the-book than a scout. And better looking besides." He brought his hands together, rubbing them briskly. "Speaking of our deceased friend - what's the word, Suzie?"

The reply from where his second was crouched down to examine their catch was a sound in an alarmingly high register, which made Jack blink and Ianto's eyebrows shoot up. "I... see," Jack drawled. "Is that an 'oh crap it's exuding poisonous acid gas and we're all going to be dead very shortly' sort of sound, or an 'I need some time alone with this' sort?"

_Poisonous acid?_ Ianto mouthed at him silently, but Jack shook his head; Suzie had the thing's weapon in her hand and was turning it over with a reverence usually reserved for antique pre-War equipment and unusually expensive imported liquor.

"Suzie?" Jack tried again, his heart hitting a quickened beat - there were dozens of things he could think of that could go wrong and he'd gone that route before and it was never pretty - but the smile his second turned towards him was a delighted little girl grin, Solstice and New Years and her birthday all rolled into one. It was a smile Jack knew all too well and which made him snort, choking back a laugh.

"It's a _welder_," Suzie announced, cradling the construction tool turned would-be weapon like a baby. "It's a Jlaxactian welder, identical to those specs that came through last year. The one that can weld _anything_, metal, wood, stone..."

"All yours, Archivist Jones," Jack declared magnaminously.

Ianto shot him a sharp look that told him the younger man knew very well why Jack was pawning the issue off and communicated entirely new levels of disgust with his superior. "I'll just go back and bring the coach around," he announced, beating a quick retreat. Suzie made another sound, half protesting squawk.

"No! No, no, Ianto, say we can keep it, come on, you know we need it..."

Chuckling, Jack stepped a few feet away and toggled his headset back on. "Owen, Tosh? Target acquired, cleanup in process. No witnesses. Tell our baby girl she can rest those pretty eyes of hers."

"Someday she's going to clock you one, Jack, and I'm going to applaud," Owen replied, but a touch of relief took the bite out of the other man's tone. "Come on back when you're done, then. If you're lucky I might even put the kettle on."

Cleanup - whether it involved witness containment or just washing questionably colored blood into the sewers (there were a few jugs of water kept in the boot of the auto for just that reason) and bagging a body - was always somewhat anticlimactic. Jack shrugged out of his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves to help bag the body, which looked even more toad-like in death, albeit a very furry one. "Not one I recognize," he told Ianto as they were heaving it into the boot. "I'm sure Owen will enjoy it, but we really do need something that can answer a few questions at some point, if we have the opportunity."

The younger man was back-lit by the flicker of the streetlamp, but Jack thought he looked flushed. "I'll keep that in mind, sir," he replied. "When they're not armed and dangerous."

"Fair enough," Jack allowed. "And tell me you're not planning on shipping that piece back to London," he added in an undertone, tipping his head significantly towards where Suzie was still determinedly holding onto the alien welder. "You're going to have to pry it off of her, if you do. And she'll dismantle your coffee maker, every last bolt, in revenge."

Ianto let the lid of the boot drop shut with a clang and a subdued sniff. "Not if I get to her bank account first," he noted darkly, frowning. His gaze flickered towards Jack. "No offense, sir, but Director Hartman may have a point. At least partially."

Jack laughed. "What? That the Cardiff branch is run on bribery, anarchy, and insubordination?" Ianto shot him a look that was both sheepish and affronted and Jack grinned, all teeth and brilliance. "Don't give her all the credit for that one - I was hearing it from Headquarters back before she was in swaddling cloths. We've always been something of an odd duck out." He scooped up his coat from where he had draped it over the fender, shrugging the wool back on. "Don't worry," he added dryly, "Yvonne doesn't make it a habit to leave an archivist with us long enough for us to corrupt them."

Spinning away, he rapped the knuckles of one hand along the side of the coach. "Alright, we're wrapped here. Off we go." He threw a sudden grin back towards Ianto. "Do I get to drive?"

"No!" Suzie called from where she was already sliding into the back seat, the welder cradled in her lap. Ianto just rolled his eyes towards the ink black cloudy sky.

"Do you have a driving license, Captain? No? Then no, you don't."

Jack mock sighed, climbing into the passenger's side. "The way you lot go on about that you'd think some fundamental rule of driving had changed. Accelerator, brake, steering wheel. Only the cosmetics are different, I promise!"

"The horses don't like you, Jack," Suzie told him sharply. "And you cut it far too close in traffic. I'd like to make it back to the Hub alive, if it's all the same.

"Last I checked," Jack complained, "the 'horse' was a mechanical engine that didn't get a say. It's not my fault the fuel doesn't accelerate right. There's no power under the hood these days."

"And by 'these days'," Ianto said blandly, sliding into the driver's seat and starting the coach's engine with a practiced pump of the foot peddles, "I can only assume you mean 'since my great great gran's day or before the War', whichever came first."

Suzie bit back a laugh. "There," she declared. "I'm not the only one who's said it. Can we keep him, Jack? You want to stay, don't you, Jones? You'll see more action here then you would in boring old London."

"Thrilling," Ianto replied, deadpan, as he pulled the auto smoothly out of the alley and into the street, sleek black and smooth as a whisper in the late night. "I never knew so many ways of getting toxic blood stains out of good suits. I feel enriched."

It sent Suzie off into quiet laughter in the rear seat and Jack leaned his head back, grinning. It was wet and cold and late, with a dead alien in the boot, but it was a good night all the same.

The Torchwood Hub, deep under the old abandoned hulk of the pre-War ruins, was one of the better kept secrets in Cardiff - in no small part due to the Rift that Torchwood was there to monitor. Their parent branch in London occupied a restored pre-War high-rise along the wharves, and a sizable number of their offices were given over to the mojo workers who kept Torchwood's secrets safe from technological and mojo spies alike. Suzie, and every liaison officer before and including Ianto, had been taken aback at the Cardiff branch's cobbled together tech-only security and bare handful of staff.

"Don't need to protect it if it's already invisible," Jack liked to point out. The spatial-temporal Rift (and Jack liked saying that, liked the way it rolled off the tongue, much better than the previously termed 'Dimensional Rift' that had implied demons and darklings and other imaginary mojo things best left alone, instead of interesting things from other places and other times that were better studied and explored - Torchwood, for all Jack might complain, was one of the last, best bastions of proper scientific curiosity) that ran through Cardiff and directly underneath the ancient bunker tunnels beneath the ruins played merry havoc with mojo sight and provided the perfect cloak for Torchwood Cardiff's operations.

It didn't, however, hurt to have a hidden entrance or five, or walls and a door that could - and had - withstood bomb blasts, and an off grid mainframe protected by the best tech Jack could scrounge. One of those was from the underground bit of salvaged lot where they parked the coach and it was through that Jack and Ianto came, lugging the black bagged body of that night's target between them. "Honey," Jack caroled, dropping his own end on the floor, which forced Ianto to do likewise, "we're home! Brought you a present!"

"Not your damned 'honey'," Owen shouted back, his voice echoing across the large open central room of their Hub from the tiny kitchen nook . "And you took your sweet time." The doctor leaned out of the edge of the doorframe, broad mouth pressed tight and downturned in a habitual scowl that was most often directed at Jack. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, vest hanging unbuttoned, and a dish towel slung over one shoulder. "I see nobody's bleeding. Dare I hope this 'present' is a new bone cutter?"

"Better!" Suzie caroled, breezing past them on a course for the broad expanse of her work table, the welder still firmly in hand. "Way better!"

The doctor shot her a tolerant look. "If it's making _her_ that happy I'm going to guess it's nothing I can use."

"'fraid not," Jack replied, nudging the bag with one toe. "Next best thing, though - toad demon!" The other man's expression remained unimpressed and Jack chuckled. "Oh, come on, Owen - it'll be just like dissecting frogs back in school. Only larger. And with more fur."

Owen rolled his eyes upwards, sighing. "Of course. You know, Jack, after they start you on human cadavers, the whole frog thing sort of loses its appeal."

"And on that note, I'll just bring it down to autopsy, shall I?" Ianto interjected brightly. "You can get started on it right away."

Owen's mouth turned further down but he nodded and Ianto, with a small sigh of his own, stooped to heft the bagged body. Jack clapped his hands together sharply and turned away, scanning the main room. "Alright, then... and where's my brilliant girl? Toshiko?"

"On the couch," Owen told him sharply. The smaller man came to stand beside him, hands wrapped around a steaming mug that smelled bitterly of inexpertly brewed coffee. "And don't you dare wake her. I just got her settled; blankets, hot bottle, good cup of tea. Let her sleep it off and she'll be fine."

Jack craned his neck to look and yes; there was a motley assortment of blankets and old quilts heaped on the battered sofa that was pushed against one wall, wrapped tight around a small lump that was topped with a rumpled mop of silk-dark hair, the only visible part of the huddled up seer. "Right, then," he said, softer. "So... target acquired, cleanup done, not much else for it once you put the thing on ice. We might as well call it a night."

"Sounds about right," Owen mumbled around the edge of his mug. "Except the police called while you were out."

Jack raised a brow. Their involvement and occasional liaison with the local police force was strained at the best of times, as the Cardiff superintendent took a dim view of outside organizations, certified by the Crown or not. "Oh, really? And what did they have to say?"

Owen crossed to one of the scattered work desks spaced through the area; Tosh's, covered with bits of salvaged tech and wires and tools and the half re-built hulk of an antique pre-war terminal. There were paper notes scattered through the pieces, mostly covered in Toshiko's small, neat handwriting. Owen snagged one from the top, his own sloppy scrawl standing out amid the cleaner notes, and held it out towards Jack. "Deaths," he said succinctly. "Six, as of today, spaced over the last two months. First few passed under radar, but now they're starting to think they're dealing with one of ours."


	2. Chapter Two

All things considered, Gwen Cooper was certain there were _worse_ ways to spend one's first day on the job, but she was hard pressed to think of what those ways might be.

It had started well enough; she had been on time, perfectly presentable, and had been given the crash course tour for rookies of the tiny Cardiff constabulary for the Old Quarter. She might have resented it - she'd had years on the streets already to her name in the greater Cardiff district - might even have had numerous thing to say about it in the weeks prior to her transfer until Rhys, bless her man, had been sick unto death of hearing it, except that everyone in the department had said the same - policing an Old Quarter wasn't like patrolling a beat anywhere else. It was a peculiarity unto itself and she'd be guaranteed to see things there that she'd never see anywhere else.

"Sure," she'd scoffed to Rhys over dinner the night before. "Because I've never seen some bloke light a smoke from his fingers before, or a nutter so high on weed he can't find the ground."

"I'm sure they're just trying to get a rise out of you," Rhys had replied reasonably, the way he'd been doing all along. "Probably do it to all the new blood, some kind of big department joke."

All joking aside, she'd wanted the job and had leapt on it when the opportunity came up. It was closer to home than the outlying suburbs; "I'm tired of patrolling Splott," she'd told Rhys when it had first come up, "and the less said about how bloody boring the Beacons are, the better!" Their flat was just outside the outermost edge of the Quarter as it was, only a quick jaunt to the constabulary station, "and just think, I'll be home that much sooner," Gwen had said.

"Imagine that," Rhys had said, with one of his broad grins that she liked so much. "So you're saying I might actually see you for dinner once in a while?"

"Stranger things could happen," Gwen had laughed, and kissed him.

She hadn't anticipated that "stranger" might mean "spending the afternoon in the Quarter A&amp;E getting stitches put in her head" on the first day of the job, however.

"I feel like such a bloody idiot," she moaned. Her new partner, a lanky ginger chap with a sympathetic smile by the name of Andy Davidson, shook his head and made a tsking sound.

"Not your fault, love. Chin up - no, really, Cooper, chin up, you're still bleeding."

"It's a scalp wound," Gwen huffed, pressing the handful of bandage they'd given her harder against the cut across her forehead with a wince. "Of course it's still bleeding. Of all the stupid, rookie mistakes... I never even saw him!"

"Course you didn't," Andy replied reasonably, a tone which Gwen was starting to irrationally take exception to - she wasn't some wet behind the ears trainee who needed reassuring, no matter how dumb she felt right then. "He wasn't there."

"No, I mean I really didn't see him at all," she sighed, biting back her temper. It wasn't Davidson's fault - he was being the best partner he could be, really, and he'd taken her straight to the A&amp;E after one of the bruisers at the pub ruckus they'd gone in to break up had clocked her from behind. He'd stayed with her - "better than doing the report," he'd told her, joking - and had already insisted in no uncertain terms that he would give her a ride home and even offered to call Rhys. She'd hastily told him against the idea because for pity's sake, it was nothing but a scrape and there wasn't any need to worry Rhys more than he already would be when she got home. "Didn't see him, didn't hear him, totally oblivious I was. Stupid mistake."

Andy was shaking his head again. "Not your fault, Cooper. Told you - he wasn't there."

Scowling, Gwen indicated the mass of bandages pressed to the cut that was making a mess of her hairline. "Beg to differ."

"Wasn't behind you," her partner insisted. "Bloke was on your two o'clock, over by the bar. You were just in the line of sight." She must have been giving him a blank look because he stretched out an arm and crooked his fingers, like beckoning to someone seen down the street. "He was a fetcher. You were just in the line between him and the chair he was reaching for."

Gwen made herself close her mouth. "Mojo? Seriously? In a _bar fight_?"

Andy shrugged. "It's an Old Believer's Quarter. More mojo workers per capita than the rest of Wales combined. You know how it is."

"Not well enough, apparently," Gwen huffed. "Didn't know I'd need eyes on the back of my head to bust up a fight at the local pub."

"It happens," Andy reassured her philosophically. "Least it was just a fetcher - chairs flying through the air are only a problem if you're standing in front of it." He gave her a boyish grin that was too friendly to take offense at. "Now, a drunk fire starter in a room full of alcohol - there's a story to make the rounds. Assuming you're lucky and make it out to tell it."

Gwen just looked at him, trying to decide if he was taking the piss out of the new girl again, concluded he might not be, and bit back another groan. "What in the hells possessed me to take this job?"

"Beats me," Andy shot back cheerfully. "Don't be like that, Cooper. You'll get used to it. Here-" he leaned closer, tapping the hand that was pressed to her forehead. "Lift up, let's have a look." Wincing, Gwen gingerly lifted the bandages, feeling the stick and pull of drying blood over the top of the drug-muffled throb in her head. Andy clucked softly. "Looks a mess," he told her helpfully. "Wash you up, get the doc to put a couple staples in, you'll be right as rain."

Gwen snorted. "On the bright side, it's my head, not my eye?"

"That too," Andy agreed. "That'd be a hell of a shiner."

In the end, he was right. The doctor came back with the results of the tests she'd had to sit through, helpfully informed her that she didn't have either a concussion or any internal bleeding - both of which she rather felt she might have told _him_ if he'd only asked - and then gave her a few shots to numb the area up and set about washing and stitching the cut. It wasn't so bad, she hastened to assure Andy, who was giving her a sort of concerned look as though he wasn't sure if he ought to be telling her to suck it up or holding her hand in sympathy. A bit of discomfort, a lot of holding still, and the strange sensation of tugging at her scalp as the doctor drew the stitches through the numbed skin. Then it was all over and she hadn't much to show for the entire ordeal except a neat line of six stitches marching from her temple back into her hair. "At least they don't shave you any more," she'd remarked, eyeing the results in her pocket mirror. "Great lot of fun _that'd_ be to explain to Rhys. He's going to have kittens as it is."

Six stitches, three hours, a couple of paperwork forms to sign, and they were free and clear. One of the nurses, who had been making quick work of cleaning up after the procedure, presented Gwen with one more form needing a signature and an orange plastic bag which, when Gwen peeked inside, revealed a mess of bloody bandages and a clear tube of used needles. "Ugh."

Andy, peering over her shoulder, shrugged. "It's your blood, love. Looks like she got it all - they're good here, nothing dodgy about it. Sign off and we'll get going, yeah?"

Making a face, Gwen signed the form and gingerly accepted the bag. "What am I supposed to do with _this_?"

"Anything you want," Andy replied, falling into step beside her as they left. "It's _your_ bits."

Gwen wrinkled her nose. "Hospitals are supposed to take care of that for you."

To his credit her new partner didn't - quite- roll his eyes. "Old Quarter," he said, as though it were the answer to everything, and maybe it was; Gwen had certainly heard it enough already for one day. "Maybe they do outside the district, but down here people are a mite more traditional. Do it by the old ways, all right and proper, and nobody leaves anything as chancy as blood or bits of themselves behind. Nobody'd go there otherwise."

"So you're saying I ought to be thankful they used proper shots instead of trying to numb me up with runes drawn with ash and rat spit?" Gwen countered dryly. It was Andy's turn to pull a face.

"Yeah, something like, though I don't think it's really rat spit," he agreed blithely. "Seriously, you ever tried to get a rat to spit on command? Come on. We'll head back to the station - I need to fill out a report, and you can drop that off at station processing along the way. They'll even let you watch while they burn it, if you want."

"I can't say I've ever been all _that_ concerned about where my blood went," Gwen scoffed. "Fetchers and fire starters are one thing, but leave me out of the runes and the chanting and crystal seer nonsense." She paused as they exited the A&amp;E, squinting painfully against the overcast light of the afternoon sun. "...ugh. You're driving."

"Wasn't planning on letting you anyways, love, but nice to know I won't have to fight you for it," Andy replied cheerfully. "Come on. We can go tell the rest of the station how you were heroically injured in the line of duty your first day out. It'll be very dramatic and all."

"Oh god," Gwen groaned, trailing after him. "Wait, wait, maybe I really do feel dizzy... maybe you should just drop me at home instead..."

"Nice try," Andy chided, "but no dice. Proper procedure and all, Cooper. Just a quick swing by the station and then I'll take you straight by your place." Catching her dubious look, he shook his head. "Buck up - sooner over with the better. It'll be fine. You'll see. This time next week, you'll wonder what you were moaning over."

"Five quid says I'm still living it down next week," Gwen predicted under her breath, following her partner to where their police coach was parked.

Jack sat back from his desk with a sigh, stretching until he could feel the knot between his shoulders loosen, spine popping into place with a muted crack. The police reports littering the surface of the desk were the same ones he had been looking at for the last five days, and despite a littering of notes penned in the margins where he had tried to make some new sort of order out of the data, they remained as determinedly uninformative as they had from the start.

The mug of coffee at his elbow was reduced to nothing but long cold dregs. Pushing himself to his feet, Jack scooped it up and slipped out the door of his office to the landing. Pausing at the head of the stairs, he glanced quickly around the main space below. The only one of his team visible was Toshiko, who was at her desk, engrossed in a display on her monitor. Suzie had breezed out over an hour previously for a run to the hardware store and a laundry list of things she needed to complete the Rift monitor rewiring, plus a promise of biscuits from the bakery if she stopped for lunch. Owen was audible, his voice - interspersed with clattering and other less savory wet sounds from the lower medical bay - was a stream of medical jargon with occasional borrowed vocabulary from Suzie's dockside cant. Jack sighed to himself and made a mental note to ask Toshiko about the filtering program she had been working on for Owen's dictophone. It would make the doctor's autopsy reports less interesting but also significantly shorter.

The last member of his team was nowhere to be seen or heard and the little kitchen, when Jack leaned over the railing to peer at it, was dark and empty. He bit back a curse of his own; the unspoken Hub rule was that one did _not_ hunt the archivist down when he was working in the archives just because one was out of coffee, no matter that Ianto's skill in brewing it outclassed all of the rest of them combined. It was something Jack had had to mention forcefully to Owen, and it wouldn't do to undermine his own authority by breaking the rule himself. He briefly considered - and just as quickly discarded - the idea of tackling the coffee machine himself; a glance at his watch reassured him that it was only early afternoon and not, therefore, to the point of desperation that a late night would have been. He wasn't at all sure what Ianto did that resulted in something so much smoother and less burnt tasting than when Jack brewed it, but Ianto smugly wasn't willing to teach and Jack had given up experimenting unless the need was dire. They had been, all of them, supremely spoiled in the months since the younger man had joined them.

Maybe, Jack thought sourly, it was all part of an elaborate plot on the part of Yvonne Hartman to undermine Jack's authority with the Cardiff team. The director of Torchwood's mother branch in London had never made any secret of her dislike of Jack - professionally, personally, and any other which way. Their clashes had become the thing of Torchwood legend since Yvonne had taken office eight years earlier. While it had never quite crossed the threshold of deliberate sabotage of the Cardiff offices, the quality of liaison officers sent to Torchwood Three tended towards the abysmal - Ianto Jones' very credible competency was therefore suspect in and of itself if only because Jack had barely dared hope that Yvonne had accidentally or deliberately sent them someone _useful_. Hostile takeover via exquisite caffeine addiction sounded more likely.

Sighing, he took the steps at a clip, swinging around to the kitchen to drop off his empty mug. Tosh glanced up as he passed by her station, her eyes dark and wide behind the thin spectacles he had insisted on getting for her after he had caught her squinting at reports a few too many times. She gave him a quicksilver smile and he grinned back, pressing a hand warmly to her shoulder. "Anything new?"

She shook her head, the tail of her dark hair brushing over his knuckles from where it was dangling half out of her pins. Lesser clips had proven utterly inadequate to the task of containing Toshiko's thick, straight hair, but she liked to try to pin it up in the current styles all the same, even if it usually only lasted half the day. "Afraid not," she told him. "Besides the three other possible deaths that didn't make it to the police, there's been nothing new. And those are still just possible - there's no way to know for sure, not unless Owen could take a look."

Jack shook his head, giving her shoulder a squeeze. "Old Believers, services already given? Not a chance of getting at the bodies without a direct order from the Crown, and we'd have to fight the families every inch of the way even then."

Toshiko frowned, slim fingers flying in a quick flurry over her keyboard. The monitor display flickered, switching to a map of Cardiff drawn in pale white lines on black, nine points clustered closely in lurid red. "It's strange, isn't it? All of them being Old Believers?"

"Maybe not," Jack allowed. "The Old Quarter borders right up alongside the Rift. If it's one of ours then chances are it just wandered over there after it came through and is making itself at home."

"And that's the only thing they all have in common." Tosh's brows sunk lower, the corners of her mouth turning down. "I've looked over the Rift monitor logs just before the first death turned up. If we go back two weeks there were at least four spikes that could have been large enough to drop multiple contacts." She glanced up at him sidelong, her fingers twining together in a worried knot in her lap. "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm good with things _now_ but it was over two months ago - I can't see that far back."

"Hey, hey," Jack soothed, rubbing his palms over her hunched shoulders. "Not your fault, pretty girl. I wasn't expecting you to. It's more than good enough that you can make the police and business lines sit up and wag their tails, right? We'd be stuck waiting for the Inspector to give us leftover dribbles, otherwise."

Tosh ducked her head, picking at bits of lint on the folds of the blanket draped over her knees. She was starting to feel the cold more often - the weather had been even more chill and wet than usual and Jack wanted to chalk it up to that, but in truth it worried him even more than her squint at printouts once had. "Owen thought I might at least try."

Jack bit back a curse. "Owen," he said evenly, "is an impatient ass. Let me deal with him." He gave her shoulders a little shake until she looked up at him. "You're not to go looking for anything without my say so, alright?"

"Yes, sir," she replied promptly. Jack gave her a smile, swooping to press a kiss to the top of her head, and strode towards the medical bay.

The team's doctor was there, bent over the operating table that dominated the space, wrist deep in a cadaver that looked more like a bad medical taxidermy joke than an actual body. Jack winced as he leaned over the rail that looked down the steps to the bay. "I see our smelly friend hasn't gotten any less smellier."

Owen shot him a sour look over his shoulder. "Did you really think it would once I opened it up?" he asked. "And before you ask, no, I don't know what it is yet. Go away, Jack. I'm busy."

"Funny," Jack remarked with a grin, "I was just going to come ask how that other project you're working on is going. You _are_ working on that, aren't you?"

The other man grunted, wrestling something loose, and turned to drop something the size of his fist - Jack wasn't at all sure that it, whatever it was, was supposed to be that shade of lurid deep green - into the cradle of a medical scale with a wet squish. Leaning one hip against the table edge, Owen toggled the foot peddle that activated his recorder. "Unidentified organ," he rattled off, tipping his head back to pitch his voice better for the microphones tucked into the lights that hung low over the table. "Removed from the lower left anterior of the thorax. Fibrous mass, Point nine kilos, thirteen point two centimeter diameter, appears to have been part of the digestion system. Possibly the reproduction or waste disposal system, it's a little vague. Best guess is it's either the thing's liver, or an undeveloped ovary. Egg sack sort of thing." Owen paused to scowl at the thing on the scale. "Assuming it's female, which I haven't been able to certify yet." He toggled off the recording and leaned back to peer up at Jack. "Care to take a bet, Captain?"

"Liver," Jack replied promptly. "Definitely betting on liver. Hopefully."

Owen snorted. "I said 'undeveloped', so even if it isn't I don't think we need to worry about egg baby juniors scattered far and wide. Seems to have been a juvenile of the species."

"Good to know," Jack agreed. "Now are you going to stop evading the question?"

Scowling, Owen tossed a scalpel carelessly towards the sink, where it landed with a clatter. "Yes, I've been working on it. There's nothing new in the last one that wasn't in my other report, or the one before that. Corresponds with the police reports neat as you please - massive internal cranial hemorrhage and they all drop over dead. Cranial aneurysm, Jack, and the only weird thing is how many in how short a time, all clumped together like that. Waste of our researching, if you ask me."

"Well, no one did," Jack retorted. "And the police have asked us to look in on it, just in case."

Owen cocked a skeptical brow at him. "You ever seen anything that kills by localized hemorrhage to the brain?"

"No," Jack admitted. "Are you sure that's the cause of death?"

The other man raised one arm, waving a gore streaked gloved hand. "Trained medical professional," he noted dryly, but then he lowered his hand and cocked his head curiously at the other man. "Though I suppose it's a fair question - ever died from a stroke, Jack?"

Jack bit back a sharp bark of laughter. "Can't say that I have, no. And I don't think gun shots to the head look the same."

Owen shrugged. "You'll just have to take my word for it, then. Blood pressure builds up, blows a loose vessel in the head. It's a fast death, at least, but I don't see how it's _our_ business, or the police's, unless it's another Old Believer lineage cult that thinks willow bark and regular prayer is the only true medical treatment. In which case it's _definitely_ the police's business, but hardly ours." He jerked a thumb at the contents of the operating table. "Not exactly like our usual fare, now is it?"

"I suppose so," Jack agreed reluctantly. "Though there are some species that kill internally - not a mark on the outside, victim just drops over dead." He tipped his head back towards the distant shadows of the ceiling several stories high overhead, squinting in thought. "That was... too long ago. I don't remember the details. We might not have done a proper autopsy back then." He grimaced. "Or there might not have been much to really look at."

The doctor grunted, turning back to the table and reaching for another pair of tongs. "Sounds like a hunt through the archive, then. Have fun with that. Oh, and if you see Jones, tell him it's absolutely afternoon tea time, will you? I could murder a coffee right now."

"You could go make it yourself," Jack suggested. Owen made a rude noise and raised both gloved and streaked hands.

"Think you'd all rather I wasn't in the kitchen right now, unless you want to have to sterilize everything. Round the man up and get us all some coffee, would you?"

"I'll think about it," Jack laughed, but he sobered quickly. "Owen, about Tosh..."

"It's cold, Jack," the doctor interjected before the other man could finish, his tone bored. "It's raining. Our little hothouse flower can't stand the rain."

"And using the Sight makes her colder," Jack replied, keeping his voice low. "You're a doctor, you _know_ how fast mojo men use themselves up..."

Owen raised one hand, interrupting. "Correction," he said dryly. "I'm a _doctor_, therefore I know just about everything about the human _body_, but I don't know fuck all about mojo. You'd need a guru or a witch doctor for that. All I know how to do is treat the symptoms, and for Tosh that means keeping her core temperature and circulation up until she remembers where her body is. Secondly," he added, firmly, when Jack tried to open his mouth to reply, "secondly, the more accurate term is mojo worker, or woman. And if you're asking my professional opinion, it's been my observation that women mojo workers burn themselves out a lot less quickly then men do. Something with the physiology or their stamina, I suppose." He shrugged. "No one's ever done a study on it, as far as I'm aware, and if Torchwood hasn't then the chances are pretty slim."

"I don't want her using her Sight outside of mission parameters," Jack ground out stubbornly. "We've been over this before, Owen."

"Yes, and I'll say the same thing I said last time," the other man snapped. "Credit me with having a little sense and some desire to keep _my_ patients alive and healthy, yeah?"

"She trusts you," Jack told him bluntly. "She looks up to you. Don't give her ideas to do anything dangerous."

"Tosh is a bright girl - more than you _or_ me - and completely capable of making up her own mind," Owen said mildly. "Hippocratic oath, Harkness. Look it up sometime." He glanced up, jaw set tight. "Now, for fuck's sake, get your useless, poncy ass out of my med bay and go round up the tea boy to get us some caffeine! Some of us have actual work to do."

Jack sighed. "Only because you ask so nicely," he declared, pushing back from the railing. "And my money's still on liver. The universe owes us one!"

Back on the floor, Jack tapped Tosh's shoulder in passing. "Coffee run," he declared, "you want a refill?"

"Oh, goodness yes," she answered, turning a flash of bright grin up towards him. "Tea for me, please.

"Tea it is," Jack agreed. "Back in a tick; it's unanimously agreed our archivist needs unearthing."

That was easier said than done, but in the end Jack found Ianto in the second sub-level archive, just coming out of L-M, clipboard and pen in hand. So engrossed was he in the list he was checking that he nearly ran into Jack, only managing to catch himself at the last moment as he rocked back hard onto his heels.

Jack grinned, the expression easier and less edged than it had been for Owen. "Ianto Jones, just the man I wanted to see."

The younger man blinked at him almost owlishly in the dim light of the corridor. His suit coat had been abandoned and the cuffs of his shirt sleeves pinned back; there was something like oil smeared across the back of one wrist and a smudge of dust on the opposite cheek that trailed up to where the waves of his dark hair were more rumpled than usual. It made a rather fetching picture in Jack's opinion and gave an entirely different flavor to his grin as he reached out to swipe his thumb across the dust smudge. "Have we been working you too hard?"

Ianto frowned, though he didn't move away. "Just putting the records in order, sir. There's some discrepancies between the filed reports and the shelving."

"Ah? Well, I'm not surprised." Jack leaned back, deliberately putting his hands in his pockets to forestall the temptation to keep touching. "Compared to you, the last three archivists we've had might as well have been non-existent. Not really sure what they did down here." He paused, recalling one who had sported bottle red hair and a rather nice set of curves. "Except shag Owen. We found that one on the cameras."

Ianto shuddered theatrically. "No thank you." He sniffed, turning his frown back to the clipboard in his hands. "Mostly they seem to have been filing reports - and I use that term _very_ loosely - and then shelving the actual items anywhere they pleased."

"And you've been finding them and putting them back in their proper places," Jack said, delighted. "Oh, I really do owe Yvonne that thank you note. Attached to a letter of commendation."

It was hard to tell in the dim light, but he thought the younger man flushed at the praise. "Just doing my job, sir," Ianto said hastily, dropping his gaze to the floor.

"Well, don't hesitate to ask for help," Jack told him. "God knows it's a big job - there's decades of acquisitions down here. If you need a second set of eyes," he added, reaching out to tug the clipboard from the younger man's grasp, "I can usually remember most of it if you give me a minute to track it down..."

"That's quite alright, sir," Ianto said quickly, all but yanking the clipboard out of Jack's hands. Startled, Jack let it go, then had to suppress a smile as the younger man hugged it proprietorially to his chest. "I think I can manage," Ianto assured him primly, "but I'll be certain to let you know if I need anything. Was there something you required?"

"Yes, actually." Jack gave him another grin, one part apology - the childishness of archival quirks aside, he liked to think he knew better as an officer than to interfere with a competent man's system of operations. "One thing - well, two, actually, but the second can wait. Right now, you can take a break."

The younger man actually blinked at him. "Sir?"

"Take a break," Jack repeated, wheedling. "You know, those occasional periods of not working that you're entitled to. Take a break and come upstairs."

Ianto regarded him levelly for a moment, then nodded slightly. "Ah. You're out of coffee?"

Jack laughed. "We all are, actually, and it's getting on late enough we ought to start thinking about dinner..."

Ianto flung up an abrupt hand to silence him, the archivist half turning away as he dug a phone link out of his pocket. The unit was buzzing softly, tiny screen flashing, and the younger man frowned as he reached up to toggle on his earpiece. "Torchwood Cardiff, Jones speaking."

Jack raised his hands in an expansive gesture towards the conduit layered ceiling. "Competent, hard working, coffee to die for _and he answers the phones_. Remind me to add a box of fruit chocolates to that package for Yvonne. She likes those."

"Yes, sir," Ianto said, distracted by whatever he was listening to on the line, but he jerked his head up a second later to shoot Jack a startled glance. "How do you know she likes..." He broke off abruptly, one hand going to his ear. "Yes. Yes, Inspector. Of course. We'll be there shortly."

Jack sobered quickly, grin fading and all business before Ianto had clicked off the line. "Another body?"

"In the middle of the Old Quarter," Ianto agreed, turning to head down the corridor towards the stairs in a bone jarring stride. "Victim collapsed right in front of two police officers."

"Bring the coach around," Jack ordered, jogging after him. "I'll get Owen!"


	3. Chapter Three

The elderly woman behind the counter of the little chip shop passed a steaming cup of coffee into Gwen's waiting hands, her thin, dry fingers brushing the younger woman's wrist briefly. Gwen gave the grandmother her best smile, bobbing her head. "Yes, thank you - blessings to you and your family."

The shop lady beamed, eyes lost in the wrinkles of her face, and mumbled a blessing back. Gwen wrapped her fingers happily around the wax paper cup, letting the heat soak into her palms, and went to rejoin her partner who was waiting for her at a little table set up on the paving stones just outside the door. Andy was grinning fondly. "Look at you," he said when Gwen dropped into her chair, "just like that, and you'd never know you didn't grow up here."

"Hey, shut it, you," Gwen shot back, but there wasn't any real venom to it. Andy and his laid back teasing was easy to take. "Just because we're not Old Believer and I didn't grow up in the Quarter doesn't mean I can't make nice. My gran'd have my ears."

"Good sort of gran, that," Andy agreed. He was still on his first cup, though it was dwindling to the cooling dregs, and there was nothing left of the fish and chips they'd stopped for besides the grease stained wrappers and some vinegar splashed crumbs on the table between them. "We get some transferred in here, come barging in and expect everything to be like a big city, like London or something. Usually doesn't last long. The Quarter doesn't change for anyone."

Gwen snorted softly. "Yeah, well, give me some credit. Perfectly local, I am."

Her partner waved a lazy hand. "I didn't mean you, Cooper. There's always a pool, though, when anybody new comes in." He pointed a finger at her, which she batted away with mock irritation. "Stick it out another week, you'll net me close to fifty quid."

"Ha!" Gwen retorted sharply. "You'd better be sharing if I'm earning it. Sounds like lunch is on you week after next."

"Deal," Andy agreed. He stretched his legs out, ankles crossed, and threaded his fingers behind his head as he leaned back. "Rhys forgiven me for that knock on the head you took, yet?"

"Don't let him rattle you," Gwen replied. "He's all bark, the big bear. Besides," she added, raking back her hair enough to show off the mostly healed pink edge of the cut, "right as rain, aren't I? This time next week they'll pop the stitches out and I'm free and clear."

"Badge of honor," Andy said solemnly, but his mouth was pulled up at the corners with barely suppressed laughter. Gwen rolled her eyes.

"Don't you start," she told him firmly. "Get enough of that back at the station house." She took another gulp of her coffee, then sighed. "Speaking of, we ought to be getting back."

It was while Andy was gathering up the wrappers and his empty cup that Gwen first saw the man. She'd climbed to her feet, stretching, and it was something out of the corner of her eye that caught her attention; something that registered as odd about the flow of foot traffic on the pavement across the street.

He was an older man, dark skinned, graying hair braided back in the long, beaded cornrows that some of the Old Believer lineages sported. Workman's pants and boots, plain vest, no hat or tie; some labor worker out for a late lunch bite, same as they were. Gwen took all of that in at an instant, but it was the halting, almost lurching path of his steps that had caught her eye.

As she watched the man stumbled, careening off of the edge of a storefront to collide with a group of women out shopping. The women scattered, voices raised in protest, but the man didn't take any notice of them. He wavered, wobbling on his feet, before taking another slow, awkward step, each motion off balance and leaden.

Gwen sighed, reaching out to catch Andy's arm. "One for the drunk tank across the street," she noted. Her partner glanced over, his expression shifting to exasperation.

"Oh, honestly - in the middle of the afternoon? Little early for that, don't you think?" Andy swept the last of the garbage up, depositing it in the curbside bin, and jammed his uniform cap back onto his head. Gwen hastily took a last swallow of her coffee, pitched the cup after the remains of their lunch, and followed her partner as Andy took a quick glance at the intermittent bits of traffic and jogged out across the street. "Excuse me," he called, "is there a problem here?"

On closer examination Gwen upgraded her first estimation from 'drunk' to 'high' - it wasn't typical behavior of any compound she was familiar with but the Old Quarter had more variety of drugs that routinely exchanged hands than she'd usually had to deal with in the greater Cardiff district. Most were licensed for medicinal or religious use, but there was still a brisk business in illegal quantities that made their way into the pockets of abusers. The man who was weaving his way down the street, ignoring everything in his path, had a slack-jawed dazed look to him and was, Gwen estimated, strung well out of his mind.

Andy had come up abreast of the fellow, a careful arm's reach away because the man was taller and broader than her partner was. "Hold up," he was saying, "look, we just need a word with you, alright?"

The man shuddered, head lolling back on his neck. For one moment he seemed to glance towards them and Gwen caught a glimpse of wide, white rimmed eyes, dark and terrified, and blood flecked bitten lips peeled back over even teeth as the man panted. Andy flinched back, startled. The man's throat moved, tight corded muscles rippling soundlessly, another violent shudder ripping through him, and then, without a sound, he crumpled at the knees.

Gwen felt her own breath up in her throat somewhere, half choking her. "Move!" she barked and Andy, bless him, did; she darted past her partner, reaching out to catch the man's sleeve. He was too heavy by far, dead weight with the momentum of gravity; she couldn't break his fall, could only let it pull her down as well, the pavement jarring her knees as she tried to cushion the collapsed man's head from hitting the stones. For one moment it was all pain and weight and the cold jolt of adrenaline and then Andy was there a second later, helping her to lower him down. Between them they managed to lay the man out on the sidewalk.

"Easy," Gwen was chanting, the words automatic, "easy, it's okay, it's alright..." It wasn't, though, the man's eyes staring dark and sightlessly up into hers, the chest beneath her hands still and breathless. She sucked in a sharp gasp, fumbling for a pulse even as she laid the man's head down to tilt his neck back and open the airway. "Andy!"

Dimly she heard the sharp click of the radio, her partner's quick, urgent voice relaying position and request for an ambulance. Gwen pulled in a steadying breath and bent down to start CPR.

The hospital in the Old Quarter wasn't all that different from any other hospital in the city; full of nurses and doctors and modern day medical equipment, the same rows of hard seats in the A&amp;E waiting room, the same curtained off and railed beds, the same beeping monitors and white corridors with harsh overhead lights. It wasn't until you looked closer that the differences started to become apparent, counted off in crystal and bead charms and paper prayer strips strung through the rails of a bed, or in herb bundles hung over pillows and ash smudges across foreheads, and countless prayer strings and faith charms that slid endlessly through the hands of those waiting. It smelled subtly sweeter than other hospitals, the harsh scent of bottled chemicals threaded through by the earthy herbal sweet smells of incense smokes and spiced oils. It always made Jack think of funeral homes.

Owen had scooped up a white surgeon's jacket on the way out the door, flung on haphazardly over his shirt and vest. It hid the worst of any non-human blood stains from his interrupted autopsy and lent him a vague resemblance of fitting in as he waded into the thick of it, London accent sharp and strident as he demanded access to the DOA that had just been brought in via police radio. Jack and Ianto trailed after the path the doctor cut, conspicuous in dark civilian coat and tie and the antique sweep of Jack's military great coat.

An inspector from the police force - an sharp faced woman who Jack couldn't, for the life of him, remember, her pale hair pulled ruthlessly back into a neat knot at the base of her neck - met them there before Owen could cause too much of a ruckus with the hospital staff. A disgruntled looking nurse led the doctor away to look at the body and the inspector gave a cursory nod to Jack and Ianto. "Suppose you'll be wanting to talk to the officers who called it in."

Jack had, in the course of his life, perfected countless smiles for getting what he wanted, kept on hand and trotted out when the occasion warranted it. This was a business smile, wide enough to convey passing gratitude mixed with confident control, but not enough tooth to be insulting. "That would be perfect, thank you."

The two police officers were in the waiting room of the A&amp;E, huddled in a black lump of uniform jackets and the smell of cheap coffee from the cups they held. They were both young; the man of the pair was a sandy redhead with an open face while his partner was a pretty little thing who gave the impression of being all wide, guileless eyes and dark hair.

The inspector was doling out introductions. "...constables Andrew Davidson and Gwen Cooper, this is Captain Harkness, from Torchwood."

It was telling, Jack thought, that Davidson reacted with widened eyes and a straightened spine while Cooper did not. They were both clean cut and perfectly regulation, but Jack would wager that he'd find a fortune charm or a prayer string somewhere on Davidson's person if he ever had a chance to frisk the younger man. The Old Quarter knew of Torchwood, better than some of their fellow government agencies did - there were places in the Quarter where people still referred to them as 'demon hunters', with a respectful awe that Jack felt was rather over warranted for a job that mostly involved search and retrieval of any flotsam the Rift coughed up.

"Call me Jack," he told them - there was a time and place for 'Captain' this and 'Captain' that, but he'd found it rarely helped when interviewing witnesses. If anything, though, the announcement made Davidson's eyes go just a tiny bit wider and yes, Jack thought ruefully, his reputation was obviously preceding him. "We've been asked to consult on this case. You two called the victim in, right?"

Davidson's face was an open book of conflicted confusion, surprise, and consternation. Cooper had stopped firmly at confusion, her brows drawn down, and the first sounds out of her mouth confirmed her as a Welsh local even if she wasn't from the Old Quarter. "Victim? Case? But... the poor bloke just collapsed. Heart attack or something." She pressed her lips closed for a moment, pale and miserable looking under the bright lights. "They said he was dead before the ambulance got there."

"We were trying resuscitation," Davidson put in quietly, "but they said it wouldn't have helped. Said he was probably gone before he hit the ground."

"They were probably right," Jack agreed easily. The inspector was eyeballing him darkly from behind the two constables, a look that Jack blithely ignored. "If it follows the pattern then it was a near instantaneous death. Quick, fairly painless. Not much you could have done. You saw the man collapse?"

Cooper had her hands pressed to her mouth, and if Davidson was a bit wide-eyed to be confronting Torchwood it was nothing to Cooper's look of dawning horror, her eyes huge and white rimmed in her pale face. "Pattern?" she choked. "It's... it's not anything catching, is it?

"No," Ianto hastily assured her from where he had taken up position beside Jack, "no, nothing like that. Nothing communicable."

"We think," Jack added, truthfully, because there hadn't been anything thus far to indicate it was, but the idea set off a dozen or more itching warnings in his imagination. Cooper's eyes were alarmingly wide and Ianto shot him a stern look.

"Nothing," the archivist repeated firmly, "communicable. You'll be fine."

"We were right there," Davidson offered helpfully. "Right across the street, I mean. Lunch hour, just grabbing a bite to eat. Gwen saw him first."

All eyes turned back to the woman, who bit her lip, looking uncomfortable at the attention. "Ah... well, yeah. He seemed a bit off, you know? Drunk, like. Not quite alright."

Jack shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. "Did he say anything?"

"No," Cooper answered. "No, he was in a bad way, poor bloke. All sort of..." she gestured vaguely to her own throat and her partner came to her rescue, filling in the words.

"Gasping," Davidson supplied. "I asked him if there was a problem and he couldn't get a word out. Choking, like."

"Yes," Cooper confirmed. "It was like he didn't even hear or see us. I thought drugs, maybe-" Jack was amused to see her partner shoot her a disgruntled look, which made Cooper bring up her hands to placate him. "It happens," she said defensively. "There's always some folk that'll abuse it, Believer or no." She grimaced, her mouth wide and unhappy. "Then... he just dropped. Really sudden." She raised one hand to her mouth, fingertips pressing to her lips before she visibly made herself drop her hands back to her lap. "We don't even know his name, they haven't ID'd the body yet."

"Right, then," Jack said, breathing a long breath out. "But he was a Believer?"

Davidson was the one who nodded. "Norsk braids," he confirmed. "Might have been Vidarr colours on the beads, but I'm not sure. That's important?"

"Could be," Jack agreed. He gave the officers a curt nod, his next words directed at Ianto even as he locked eyes with the inspector. "Mister Jones, I need you to round up Doctor Harper and the victim's body. I'm also going to need an analysis run on everywhere it's been since the victim collapsed; scrub the ambulance, the drivers, the nurses, the morgue attendant, all of it."

The inspector's mouth tightened into a hard, thin line, disapproval written in every tense muscle, but she didn't look away or voice an objection and Jack gave her full points for it. Instead, to his surprise - and also the younger man's, if his expression at his own outburst was anything to go by - it was Davidson who spoke up. "What? Wait - you can't take the body. It hasn't even been ID'd yet, the family hasn't been notified. We don't know for sure what lineage he is; there's lots that don't hold with autopsy afterwards, you can't just go taking it!"

Jack grinned, an expression that showed more teeth than was really pleasant. "That's where you'd be wrong. We're Torchwood. We report directly to the Crown. We're outside your laws, and we've been asked to investigate this case. We can do anything we have to."

Davidson stubbornly shook his head. "But..."

"You said everyone," Cooper interrupted. She had her lower lip caught unhappily between her teeth, her eyes still wide. "An analysis on everyone. That means us too, yeah?"

Jack gave her a gentler grin; smart girl, and he could almost taste the anxiety rolling off of her. "You're clear," he assured her. "We already checked. And," he added, rounding on Davidson, "we're just doing an examination. You'll never be able to tell we did anything and we'll contact the family afterwards. Ianto?"

"On it, sir," the younger man replied briskly, striding away. Jack nodded approvingly and reached into his pocket, sliding out a card. Cooper started when he offered it to her, her automatic gesture to reach for it half aborted, as though she wasn't sure she should.

"Take it," Jack told her. "If you think of anything, remember anything - anything strange, or unusual, or that might be important - give us a call."

Cooper hesitated, then reached out to pluck the card from his fingers. "Yeah," she said quietly. "Alright, then." She didn't, Jack noted, turn to look for confirmation from the inspector - very smart girl, he thought, quick on the uptake. He gave her an encouraging smile and a thumb's up - the gesture was older than any of them were and she frowned, confused, and then waved at him somewhat vaguely in return - before turning on his heel and striding after Ianto.


	4. Chapter Four

"...two nurses, the admitting A&amp;E physician who signed off on the death certificate, morgue attendant and assistant, all administered standard two hour doses of retcon with regards to the death of one John Doe," Ianto rattled off easily as he turned their coach into the ramp that led to the Hub's underground park. "All pertinent information noted and I'll have those retroactive authorization forms on your desk in an hour, sir."

"You know," Jack suggested, lacing his fingers behind his head, "you _could_ be a little less efficient with the paperwork if you wanted to."

"I'm sure I could, sir," the younger man replied dryly, "but Director Hartman might have something to say about it."

"All the better!" Jack declared. "I haven't had a proper row with Yvonne in far too long. She keeps avoiding my calls." There was a snort from the back seat and Jack craned his neck to be able to see Owen in the rear view mirror. "Got anything yet, Owen?"

"I'm hardly going to do an autopsy in the seat of the coach," the doctor shot back. "And what was that about, Jack? Promising some git I wouldn't do a proper look see?"

Jack hummed thoughtfully as Ianto brought the coach around, pulling it to a stop beside the lift doors. "Actually, I think what I actually said is that you wouldn't be able to tell we'd done anything afterwards. Just keep it neat enough we can glue it all back together."

Owen snorted, flinging the door open to slide out. "I'll put everything back where I found it," he promised. "Somebody helping me with this? Bloke's _heavy_."

Jack sat up quickly. "Here - Ianto, why don't you..."

The younger man intercepted his grab for the steering wheel, firmly pushing Jack's hand away like he would a grabby toddler's. "Sir," he said evenly, "please _don't_ touch the horses. They don't like you. I'm quite serious."

Jack flung up his hands and shouldered his own door open to slide out. "They're not horses," he insisted. "They're the world's dumbest bastard cousin of a retarded AI that some idiot thought would be a good idea to shove under the hood of a podged together hybrid car. They don't _have_ likes or dislikes."

"And _that_," Owen said at his elbow, "is exactly why they don't like you. Your reputation is slipping, Harkness. Used to be they said you'd try to get your way into anything's pants, but I've yet to see a coach that could stand you."

"They're really _dumb_ AIs," Jack maintained. "I've seen sponges that fell through the Rift that have more intelligence than the AIs we put in our cars."

"They're horses," Ianto inserted. The younger man had twisted around in the driver's seat, watching as they slid the shrouded body of the latest victim from the back. "They're not supposed to be brilliant."

"That," Jack declared with a grunt as he shouldered the body, "only proves you've never seen a real horse."

"Don't think any of us have, except you," Owen said. He waited until the older man has straightened before slamming the door shut and giving it two quick taps, then stepped back as Ianto turned the coach away. "Not like we've got all that copious spare time - or interest - to go play tourist in London with the big conservation zoos."

"I'm not sure seeing a zoo exhibit for the kids really counts," Jack groused, waiting for Owen to key the lift lock. "Come on, let's get this guy on the table."

They were navigating the steps down to the autopsy bay - "ramp," Jack growled, "remind me we need to put a ramp in here," - when the front entrance incoming alarm sounded, the heavy sealed door sliding back with a dull thud.

"Ianto!" Jack called, "could use a hand down here!"

It was Suzie's face that appeared a few moments later over the upper railing, however, and she grinned like a little girl at the sight of them as she leaned too far over the banister, her hair trailing in dark, disorganized ringlets out from underneath her newsboy cap. "Ooooh!" she cooed, "what's this, then? Went off without us, did you? No fair!"

"Oh, not again," Owen hissed under his breath, scowling. Jack grunted, and with a last heave managed to deposit the body on the table.

"I'll take care of it," he told the other man. "You deal with this. Top priority. You find anything, you give a yell."

He took the stairs back up at a clip and met Suzie at the top of them. His second was still half hanging on the rail and Jack sighed as he caught her elbow, dragging her up. She was a loose limbed weight against him, her eyes blown dark and wide, and her breath smelled aggressively of cinnamon candy when her head tipped back against his shoulder, her smile broad and bright. "No fair," she told him, mock pouting, "no fair at all. I want to go. Did you shoot it? Was it slimy? I hate the slimy ones. What was it, then, boy's lunch out, huh?"

"Suzie," he said sternly, but his warning pinch against her inner arm, through her workman's shirt, might as well have been nothing but a tap for all the heed she took of it. Tosh, blessedly, was in the kitchen; he could hear her humming and the muted clatter of dishes. "Suzie, we've _talked_ about this."

"About what?" she said, and he gave her another warning shake, hard enough to make her stumble. "Ow! Oh, don't be mean, Jack. Come on, what are you so upset about? It was only one. I promise. Just one."

"One drink doesn't get you pissed," Jack told her grimly, steering her bodily towards the couch. "And you, Miss Costello, are well on your way to pissed. _In the middle of the day_." He pushed her onto the cushions, where she promptly collapsed into them, giggling. Jack bit back a growl, helping her swing her boots up onto the couch. "We discussed this, Suzie, remember? _Not_ during work. You _promised_."

"It was just _one_," Suzie protested. "I stopped for lunch, that's all. Nothing wrong with a pint with lunch, right?"

"It is if your definition of 'one' is more like my definition of 'five'," Jack sighed. "You were supposed to be picking things up for repairs. Did you even do that?"

"'Course I did," Suzie said, the words punctuated with a yawn. She waved a vague hand towards the cluster of desks. "Dropped it over there. Biscuits too. 'Cus I promised."

"Very thoughtful of you," Jack agreed. He gave her a push to lie back, rescuing her hat and dropping it on the coffee table. "Go to sleep, Suzie. We'll talk about this - _again_ \- when you're sober.

She caught at the cuff of his coat, blinking. "Really was only one, I swear."

"Good _night_, Suzie," Jack said firmly, laying a hand against her forehead. She subsided, eyes obediently closing, and he sighed. "Sleep it off," he told her quietly.

He had slid his coat off and slung it across the end of the banister that led to the upper level when Ianto appeared, the younger man slightly out of breath from taking the stairs that led up from the car park. Jack stopped him before he could say anything, signaling quiet with a sharp gesture across his own throat, and jerked a thumb towards the autopsy bay and the couch. "Owen's working on the body. Suzie's out on the couch."

"Ah," Ianto said quietly. "In that case, sir, I'll go help Tosh put something together, since all the rest of us skipped lunch. Will after lunch be soon enough for those forms?"

"You can keep them until after dinner, if you want," Jack suggested wryly. "I'm still working on yesterday's. Lunch sounds great, though - and coffee?" He grinned, pressing his palms together pleadingly. "Pretty please?"

The younger man did not - quite - roll his eyes, but he nodded his assent. Beaming, Jack scooped up his coat and headed for his office. "Just for that, I'll make sure those reports get done. Oh, and start thinking about dinner - this is probably going to be a long night."

"Well," Owen sighed hours later, pulling out a seat at the conference table and dropping heavily into it, "I have good news and bad news. Which would you rather?"

"Oh," Jack replied breezily from the head of the table, "let's try good news first, this time. Soften us all up."

Owen snorted. "Oh, yes," he said, "because _that_ works so well." He leaned back to squint at a handful of printouts he had brought with him, before giving up and sliding his reading glasses on. "Well, long story short - and listen closely, because I don't say this often - you were right. We're not just chasing our tails. Cause of death is _not_ a normal medical diagnosis."

Jack clapped his hands once. "Lovely. So what are we dealing with?"

"That," Owen started, "is where the bad news comes in..." He was interrupted, however, as the frosted glass of the conference room doors slid back and Suzie stumbled in, her hair and clothes rumpled and face still creased from sleep.

"You all started without me again," she grumbled, dropping into the chair nearest the door. "Least you could've done is wake me up for dinner."

"You know," Owen commented sourly, "you're a lot more fun when you're drunk. What do you say, Jack? Maybe we could bend the rules for Miss Sunshine, here. Let her keep on a bender and she could be smiles and willing to please all the time."

"In your dreams, Harper," Suzie snarled. "Not enough gin in the world to make _you_ look any better."

"Alright, children," Jack said, raising his voice, "alright, enough. Save the flirtation for later. Suzie, I think Ianto kept a plate wam for you for later. Right now, Owen was just telling us the good and bad news about the current case."

"Right," Owen agreed. "Well then, before I was interrupted, I was saying that the cause of death definitely _isn't_ an aneurism. At least, not any I've ever seen. The bad news is that I have no idea what caused it. I've never come across anything like it before."

"Aneurism?" Suzie asked. "Wait, what... oh, is this that rubbish goose chase the police sent over again?"

"Yesterday I would've agreed with you," Owen sighed. "Today, we got our hands on a fresh body that matched the pattern - couple hours old, no more. I've done a full workup and I'll swear on my license - if that's an aneurism, it's a bloody peculiar one for the record books."

Jack leaned forward across the table on his elbows. "Can you explain - in layman's terms - _why_?"

"Sure," Owen agreed blithely, tossing the printouts onto the table. "Say you die. Nothing traumatic, nothing smeared all over the pavement, just up and die, something inside gives out and you drop over. Couple of hours later the stiff you leave behind is cooling down, rigor mortis starting to set in, and what else? Anyone? Basic laws of physics, kids." The bored look he cast around the table conveyed that he didn't really expect any of them to speak up, but it was quiet Tosh with her eyes dark and wide behind the wire rim of her lenses and a bulky, hand knit shawl bundled around her shoulders, who tentatively raised one hand.

"Bruising," she offered softly. "The blood drains down and the body bruises."

"One gold star for the seer," Owen declared, rapping his knuckles on the table top. "Livor mortis, postmortem lividity caused by the hypostasis of the blood. Or, in other words, gravity still works even when you're dead and when your heart's not pumping all that lovely blood around any more it's got nowhere to go but down - wherever the relative 'down' is to the body's positioning after death." Reaching out, he shoved the report to one side, flipping open a manila folder with several color prints which he flicked towards the center of the table. "Our friend here was laid out on his back, morgue standard. According to Newton and every apple that's ever fallen off a tree, all the blood in his body should be pooling down towards his back side, with the exception of where his weight's resting to compress the blood vessels."

"I take it that it's not, then?" Ianto asked, head cocked as he examined one of the photo prints.

"Yes," Owen replied, one finger raised to stave off questions, "and yet, no. Newton isn't quite rolling over in his grave, gravity still works, and the blood is pooling downwards - where there's any blood to pool."

Jack sat up a little straighter, the pen he had been tapping against the table top stilling in his hand. "Haemovore?"

"If that's your fancy word for 'blood sucking demon', then no," Owen answered promptly. "Or at least there's no puncture wound of any sort, not even a needle mark. Clean as a baby's bottom, and by weight, judging standard for a body of that build, the volume all seems to be accounted for. No, it's just not in the right spots."

Suzie was frowning, half squinted in a way that could communicate either skeptical disbelief or the onset of what promised to be a sizable headache. "So... what? The body was moved a few times? We knew that."

"Not unless moving him postmortem could account for all of the blood being missing from most of the anterior quadrant of his brain," the doctor replied blithely. "Ditto for muscles in the extremities, but not _all_ of them." He shrugged, sliding his glasses off and tossing them after the printouts. "Think of one of those so-called science experiments they teach you in school - drop oil into water and shake it up good, then drop soap slivers in and watch the oil retract. Like that, but the oily water in this case would be the deceased's blood. There's portions of the body it's retracted from and other portions where there's too much of it, but Hell if I know why."

They were all silent for a moment, mulling that over, until Jack tapped the cap of his pen sharply on the table. "Right, then," he said briskly. "Sounds like a challenge. Owen, see what else you can get from our friend. Ianto, if there's anything in the archives that even remotely resembles this then I want to know about it - Tosh, see if you can sweet talk the systems into getting us better answers faster, will you? Suzie, apple of my eye, light of my life..."

"Oh, gods," Suzie groaned, covering her face.

Jack grinned broadly. "We need full examination access to the previous victims. I don't care if you have to call Yvonne and get her out of bed - I don't care if you have to ring up Buckingham Palace. Get us authorization to exhume every victim we have a case file for who hasn't been cremated or mummified already."

"You don't ask much, do you?" Suzie sighed. "Bloody hell, Jack."

"Don't forget sky burial," Ianto suggested helpfully, a smile barely touching the corner of his lips. "Or the ever popular floating out to the middle of the Bay and set on fire... though I suppose that counts as cremation."

"Either way, I'm not going to examine whatever's left over from any of them," Owen noted sharply. "Natural burial only, Suzie. They're no good to me if all the blood's already been flushed out."

Suzie gave him a one handed response, which the doctor shrugged off with a grin. "And what are _you_ going to be doing while we're all running about?" she asked Jack.

Jack smiled, leaning back in his chair, hands laced behind his head. "Calling in a few favors."

"I don't like it," Gwen said without preamble the next morning. She slammed the door of her locker shut harder than necessary, shrugging sharply into her uniform jacket. "I just can't get it out of my head, you know?"

"What's that, then?" Andy asked. He was seated on the bench, still lacing up his boots, and Gwen sighed and dropped down beside him.

"That poor bloke, yesterday. And then they just up and take the body..."

"Oh," Andy said, voice low and flatter than Gwen had ever heard it. "_Torchwood_."

"Yeah," she shot back sharply, "and what's that, eh? Who are they?"

Her partner hesitated, studiously tying off the laces of his boot before he straightened up. "They're... Torchwood," he said, reluctantly. "Look, it's not for the likes of you and me, alright? Best just to let it be."

"It's not right," Gwen insisted, frowning down at where her hands were knotted together in her lap. "And everything they were saying - contagion, or a victim... If it's contagion, something going around, we need to know, don't we?" She swallowed, suppressing a shiver. "I could barely sleep, thinking about it. And if victim then victim of _what_? If it's a crime then it's still us that needs to know about it, but nobody's telling us anything!"

Her voice was rising and Andy shushed her, hissing; on the other side of the lockers, in the next aisle over, Gwen could hear Toby calling to his partner to save a cup of coffee for him. A locker door banged shut, boots tromping out; Andy had taken hold of Gwen's wrist and only let it go when the door to the changing room swung closed.

"It's not us," he told her urgently, voice low. "We don't need to know, it's nothing to do with us. It's Torchwood."

"That doesn't tell me a lot of good," Gwen hissed back, irritated. "I've never heard of Torchwood before. What are they? Some sort of special unit?"

Her partner ran a hand through his hair, leaving it more rumpled than it had been to start with. "No... maybe... Look, Cooper, it's a Quarter thing, alright?"

Stung, Gwen sat back. "Oh, what? So yesterday I'm all but local and today I'm not good enough for your precious Quarter?"

Andy had the grace to look sheepish, a rush of color in his face. "Didn't mean it like that... don't be so prickly. It's just hard to explain, alright? But if Harkness says it's Torchwood's case then believe me, it's nothing you or I want anywhere near."

"Who's he, then?" Gwen asked quickly. "You said that yesterday, on the way back from the A&amp;E - that you couldn't believe it was Jack bloody Harkness, but you wouldn't tell me who he is. What's so special about him and this Torchwood of his?"

Gwen had seen her new partner in a variety of situations - not all of the possibilities to be found in their line of work, for sure, but enough to be able to read him decently and Andy looked truly pained at the subject, shoulders hunched and unable to meet her eyes, mouth pressed into a thin, unhappy line. "They're... spooks," he said at last, reluctantly. "Demon hunters, alright?"

Puzzled, Gwen frowned. "What, like... mojo workers?"

Andy waved that away with an impatient hand. "No... yes... maybe. Doesn't matter, maybe some of them are. Harkness is, or at least they say he is - biggest mojo man in all of Cardiff, maybe all of the monarchy, 'cept no one knows what his line is." He dropped his voice, forcing Gwen to lean in to hear him. "They say... they say he's immortal. Doesn't age, doesn't die. They were talking about him in my Gran's day. Harkness the Eternal, they call him, but I've never heard of a mojo line that will keep a man alive year after year. They say he bargained it from a demon."

It took a moment for the words to sink in, but when they did Gwen had to laugh. "Oh, come on..."

"I'm serious," Andy said, and the way he said it brought her up short, the laugh dying in her throat. "Torchwood - they're demon hunters, Gwen. The old kind, the real thing. That whatever it was, yesterday; if they're in on it, we don't want anything to do with it."

"You're joking," Gwen scoffed. "Alright, you've had your fun, had one over on the new girl..." but her partner was shaking his head, face serious, and Gwen found herself trailing off. "You're not serious. You can't be. Demons? You don't... Andy, you don't seriously believe those kid stories, do you?"

Andy's mouth was pulled down, his eyes pinched. "I've never seen one," he admitted, "but I've never seen Africa either. Doesn't mean it's not there. And sometimes there's things you can't explain... there's strange stuff that goes on in the Quarter, sometimes. Stuff you can't just write off. And if it's really bad stuff, then that's when Torchwood steps in."

He was tense and earnestly serious and Gwen finally had to look away, something too tight in her own throat that she tried to swallow down. "Don't be daft," she managed, her voice sounding off in her own ears. "So... what? They hunt the monsters under the beds and things that go bump in the shadows? There's no such thing. And no one's immortal, mojo or no. Maybe... maybe they just pass the name down, like some sort of code from back in the War days. It can't be the same man."

"Maybe not," Andy allowed. He didn't sound convinced, but he didn't sound like he was humoring her either and that was worth at least a little credit. "But there's stuff, sometimes, you just can't explain." He huffed out a breath and she felt him fumbling with something, a rustle of cloth and the creak of the bench that finally forced her to turn back and look at him.

Her partner shoved one arm into her view, his sleeve pushed back to bare an expanse of pale, freckled skin and for one inane moment all Gwen could think of was that he must burn like flash fire in the summer. It took her a longer moment to decipher what he was showing her, painted in neat, vivid strokes of solid black against the thin skin of his inner arm, just above the crease of his elbow.

When she involuntarily leaned forward Andy smiled, a wry sort of expression, and turned his arm to give her a better view of the tattoo. "Ma'at," he told her. "She weighs the souls of the dead against a feather, to judge whether they're worthy." He shrugged slightly, an edge of embarrassment creeping into his voice. "I always knew I wanted to be a copper. My parents were hoping lawyer, maybe, but I'd rather be out _doing_ then spend all my time talking about it, you know?"

Daring, Gwen pressed a light finger to the lines of the feather traced against his skin. It felt like perfectly normal, warm flesh, nothing at all to differentiate the marked part from the part that wasn't. Flushing, she pulled back. "Aegyptus lineage, isn't it?" He looked startled and she grinned, pleased. "See, I do know a little. Don't most people just carry charms, though?"

"Eh." Andy tugged his sleeve back down, self consciously re-buttoning his cuff. "Technically, in uniform, we're not supposed to. Some times they say it's fine, other times it's not, so I got it inked on. _Technically_ I'm not _carrying_ anything."

Gwen muffled a laugh behind her palm. "Sneaky, that." She sobered quickly, dropping her hands back into her lap. "So... you do believe in all of it, then. Demons and darkling, and..."

"Not _all_ of it," Andy corrected her. "There's so much stuff in all the different lineages, nobody believes in _all_ of it." He shrugged, bracing his hands against the edge of the bench. "I believe in faith. Not so much all the ritual... I don't have time for it, who does? And it's not like you really _need_ it. Fate, sometimes. I can believe in fate. But it's not like I believe in fae in the garden or ley lines on a full moon. But I do believe there's more stuff out there than what I've seen. So maybe Torchwood does hunt demons... or maybe they just take care of all of the crap we don't get paid enough to take care of. Mojo men from lines that could do real damage who've gone off their nut, or foreign spies, or things that've crawled up out of the sewers with rabies - who knows! It's not in my job description, or in yours, so better they deal with it then us."

He was humoring her, downplaying it, just a bit, she was almost sure of it, but she couldn't bring herself to care. The shiver caught her before she could bite it back, making her wrap her arms around her own ribs to contain it. "You think that's what it was?" she asked. "Rabies, maybe? They said... they said it followed a pattern, that bloke yesterday, but I thought rabies was all frothing at the mouth..."

"Oh... oh, hey." Awkwardly, Andy reached out, pressing a tentatively concerned hand to her shoulder. "Is that what's got you all worked up? They said it wasn't contagious."

"They _think_," Gwen muttered, flushing. "That's what Harkness said." She gave herself a hard shake, brushing her partner's hand away and drawing herself up. "No, that's not... that's not it. I just can't shake the feeling something wasn't _right_. The whole thing. That poor man... it just didn't _feel_ right."

Andy was looking at her now, closer than she liked, his brows drawn down. "Why - did you see something? If you noticed something, anything - we're supposed to pass it on. If you saw..."

"No," Gwen said, sharply reflexive, and then had to swallow around the sudden lump in her throat. She made herself laugh, the sound weak. "No, really, it's... it's nothing. Slept bad last night, that's all. Feel like I'm in over my head, you know? It's... I'm sure it's nothing."

Sighing, Andy gave her shoulder a pat. "You get used to it," he assured her. "Look, you want to know what Torchwood does? They do the shit jobs. Means all you and I have to do today is go back out on patrol like normal. Not so bad, right? And if you've had a crap night, well... that's what they make coffee for."

It was easier to dredge up a real smile at that, easier to push herself to her feet and do up her jacket proper. "Okay," she said. "Sorry. You're right, I'll get used to it. So... coffee, then? You buying?"

"Only because I've still got fifty quid riding on you," Andy agreed amiably, scooping up his own jacket. "In my own best interest to keep you going, right? Come on."


	5. Chapter Five

The Spider was a tall man, broad shouldered and rangy, with as much disregard for silk waistcoats and the niceties of perfectly knotted ties as Jack. He had a reputation for straight talk, honest business, and an excellent taste in liquor. Rumor spoke of a charming disposition when you were on his good side and a heavy fist when you weren't, and a willingness to try anything and anyone once - and then twice or thrice just to make sure he liked it - that rivaled Jack's own.

He was also the man who controlled the docks around the ruins and the most reliable information broker in Cardiff. His eyes and ears were the cabbies and the bartenders of the city, the newspaper boys and errand runners, and despite doing a brisk business in contraband that came in from foreign shores, smuggled in through the docks, the Spider's best stock of trade was in secrets. If something needed knowing chances were the Spider knew it and would share... for a price.

Jack had to play nice and grease a few palms along the docks to find where the man had staked a claim that week, but once found it was an easy waltz in; he was a known quality who had done business there before. When he came knocking the Spider's assistant - a pretty little blond number that was no-nonsense all the way from her pressed man's suit jacket to her patent leather shoes and who was cold, competent death in a dark alley - just fixed him with a cool gaze and then sighed and let him in. Jack, mindful of the two guns on her he could see and the three more he probably couldn't, gave her his very best smile and a tip of the hat he wasn't wearing and sauntered past her to go find the man in charge.

The Spider was on the phone when Jack stuck his head through the door of the room he was pointed to. The Spider's operation didn't like putting down roots - being too easy to find was an occupational hazard for him as much as it was for Jack's team, though for different reasons - but for as much as they moved around the man knew how to do it in style. There wasn't anything makeshift about the office except for a certain bareness to the decorations, which could just as easily be attributed to personal taste. The Spider's desk was a broad thing of solid oak, polished to an antique butter shine, and Jack had at least one fond memory that involved that piece of furniture, among others.

The man himself was leaned back on the springs of his desk chair, feet up on the corner of the desk. He beckoned Jack in without pausing a beat in his conversation, something that involved a lot of "yes" and "no" and "you do that" on his end. Jack waited just inside the door, leaning back against the frame with his hands in his pockets.

The Spider finished up his conversation - "Tuesday, no later, you know the drill" - unhurried, and tumbled the receiver back into the cradle before he sat up, feet dropping to the floor with a thump. "I say," he drawled, lacing his hands behind his head, "if it isn't Mr. Harkness. What a pleasant surprise."

Jack grinned. "By which you mean it isn't a surprise at all but I'm not unwelcome. Hello, again, Caleb."

There weren't many on the streets that remembered the Spider's original name but Jack had never been in the habit of being just anyone and the other man's smile turned up a notch more, crinkling around the corners of his eyes in real pleasure. He'd been nearly two decades younger, an up and coming street tough, the first time Jack had met him and neither one of them were likely to forget that instance in as much as it had involved Jack gasping back to life at the other man's feet. "Never unwelcome," Caleb assured him, waving him towards one of the other chairs in the room. "Well... unless I'm hauling your sorry ass out of the bay again."

"That was only the once..."

"Twice," Caleb corrected.

"...Twice," Jack conceded, settling into the chair opposite the other man, "but I didn't mean for it to happen the second time. Honestly, I don't make a habit of it."

"You'd better not," Caleb warned, jokingly, "or I'll start charging for the service." He pushed himself to his feet, circling the end of the desk, and Jack tipped his head back to keep the man in his peripheral vision as Caleb busied himself at the little side bar with the clink of glass on glass. "Scotch?"

"Make it lime and soda," Jack replied, "some of us are working."

Caleb made a scolding tsk noise against his teeth, but came back with two lowball glasses, one full of ice and soda water with a wedge of lime for Jack, the other with golden rum for himself. Rather than retreating to his chair he leaned a hip up against the edge of his desk next to Jack, taking a sip from his drink as he surveyed the other man with a frank gaze that Jack returned. "If you're working then I'm guessing this isn't a social call," Caleb noted, "or else we'd both be getting a lot more naked."

"'Fraid not," Jack agreed, and let the easy banter drop away as he leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. "The murders in the Believer's Quarter. What do you know?"

The Spider raised one brow, taking another swallow of his drink. "Depends," he replied calmly. "What are you willing to pay?"

Jack would have preferred to skip the bargaining, but Caleb didn't deal in set prices, not even for erstwhile allies. In the end, it cost him two bottles of some of the oldest scotch buried in the Hub archives - one of which was nearly as old as Jack was, and the other of which he was fairly certain wasn't even terrestrial - and one fairly innocuous info search, executed through Tosh, on the Hub's mainframe.

"Could skip all of it if you'd give me an hour with that pretty little farseer of yours," Caleb had suggested.

"No," Jack had told him firmly.

"I'd be a perfect gentleman," the other man had assured him, only half in jest. "Hands off, strictly business - they say she's very accurate."

"_No_," Jack had repeated flatly. "Toshiko - and my entire team - are _not_ up for debate." Caleb had grinned, an expression that said he'd write it off as a joke if Jack would - and they'd continued on from there.

In the end it only took a few minutes, Caleb leaning out the door to call his assistant back in. "Hazel, pull up a list for Jack, here, would you," he told her pleasantly, "all the stiffs we've got tagged that Cardiff's finest missed."

It made Jack sigh - there were more, of _course_ there were more, and he could only hope his own team had flagged most of them. Hazel gave him the same cool look she'd given him in the hallway but obediently pulled a personal data book out of her pocket, an elegant little thing all in brass and silver scrollwork that made Jack wonder if Tosh or Ianto might want one, come Solstice - Torchwood's standard equipment was utilitarian brushed aluminum casing, with interiors that put the standard market models to shame, but nothing said the outer casing couldn't be changed.

Hazel had hers snapped open, stylus flicking, _tap tap swish_ across the inner screen, and in short order Caleb was retrieving a few printed pages that slid neatly out from the recessed printer onto the surface of his desk. He handed these to Jack with a wry smile. "Identity where known, time and place of death... I'm sure you can pull the pieces together from there. You might want to look a little further than your own backyard next time, old man."

Jack glanced through the printouts quickly - at least six more names beyond what they'd already found - and grimaced before offering the other man his hand. "Pleasure doing business with you, as always."

"Oh, the pleasure's all mine," Caleb assured him, his grip firm. "Come by next time when you're not working, we can share one of those bottles you're going to send me."

"Send a runner over tomorrow for them," Jack suggested, "and the info. I'll have Tosh run the search tonight, though what you want to know about Markeson for..."

The other man shook his head. "I could tell you, but it'd cost you another small concession."

"I'll pass," Jack said, wryly. "Good hunting."

"And you," the Spider said, smile fading into seriousness. "I hope you catch whatever the hell is doing this."

"That's our job," Jack agreed quietly. "That's always been our job."

Gwen woke with a gasp, heart pounding, and for one long moment the darkness around her was an unfamiliar black on grey landscape of alien shapes and nothing made sense. Slowly, fuzzily, it came into focus - her own bed, her own bedroom, the dim light of the street lamp outside slanting through the curtains and the dull tick tock of the clock which wasn't the heavy thud of her heartbeat at all.

A hand on her hip almost sent her through the roof, her cry barely bitten back into a muffled squeak, but it was only Rhys, reaching for her sleepily in the darkness. "Gwen?" he mumbled, more asleep than awake. "Alright, love?"

"Yeah," she managed, her voice thick in her throat. "Yeah, just... Need to pee. Go back to sleep."

She had to catch herself against the door jamb by the time she stumbled her way to the toilet, trembling like a leaf and more than half winded. That, in itself, was a mistake; she snatched her hand away from the wood with a hiss, fumbling in the dark for her own washcloth where it hung by the sink, and closed the door as quietly as she could behind herself before toggling the light on with one elbow.

The harsh, white light of the overhead flooded the tiny bathroom in a burst of glare on tile and garish colors from towels and shower curtain. Gwen dropped the toilet seat, lid and all, and collapsed onto it, arms hugged tight around herself as she shook.

It took long minutes of nothing but the sound of her own ragged breath bouncing back to her before she could make herself move again, dimly thankful that Rhys was such a heavy sleeper. He wouldn't notice how long she stayed in the bath; he probably wouldn't ever remember waking in the middle of the night, bless the man. Shivering, Gwen scrubbed her hands across her face, rubbing at eyes. The dream that had woken her was still there, lurking just beyond the bright light of the tiny bathroom, full of pain and fear and silent screaming, unable to move...

"Just a dream," she muttered, her whisper too loud against the tiles. "Just a nightmare."

It didn't sound very convincing even to herself.

If she closed her eyes - which she didn't - and listened - which she was trying not to - the whole bath was alive with voices, whispering, babbling, a hundred different tiny voices clamoring to be noticed. The echo of Rhys' off tune singing lingered in the plastic of the shower curtain, her own hurried morning rush embedded into lip gloss and toothpaste, and Rhys had used her toothbrush, damn the man, even though he'd sworn he hadn't, and the memory of the time they'd made out last week - the time he'd nearly made her late for work - was embedded in the edge of the sink counter, right where he'd crowded her against it, his big hands warm under her tank top...

Gwen balled the wash cloth - her own, soaked through with nothing but the memories of soap and water and rinsing - up against her face, trying to drown out the cacophony.

_Did you see something?_ Andy had asked. _If you saw something_...

_No_, Gwen had said, because it was always 'no', it had always been 'no', ever since her mother had told her to stop imagining, ever since her father had shook his head and patted her hair and told her it was better not to tell fibs. Gwen had learned to hold her tongue when she was small, and when she was grown she had learned how to not see what wasn't there so that she didn't have to choose whether or not to tell because there was nothing there after all. Just imaginings, and her mother had been right all along. Nothing but a little girl's overactive imagination, nothing at all that was real.

Until it was. Until it all came pouring back, clamoring for attention, stories and secrets and lies locked inside ever single thing around her, all screaming into her ears. It'd been years since the last time, _years_, and Gwen couldn't remember how she'd done it when she was small, how she hadn't flinched and shaken and cried, fumbling through the medicine cabinet for analgesics and awash in the images and sensations of every time Rhys or herself had touched every single bottle, over and over and over again.

She shook three pills out into her hand and gulped them down with a palmful of water scooped from the faucet. The floor was cool tile covered by deep plush bath mats and she sat with her butt on the former and her toes buried in the later (Rhys' toe, the one he had jammed hard in a trip-up in the kitchen the week before last, was still paining him - she ought to tell him to stop being a baby and go have it checked except he'd never _said_ a blessed word, it only echoed through the mat and up into her own feet to make her toes hurt in sympathy) and leaned her back and aching head up against the hard wood of the under-sink cabinets. The cool helped, and there wasn't much for the cabinets to tell her. It was quieter and it let her breath, until the ache in her head subsided and she could stop shivering, all the voices muted more with each deep, steady breath.

Just a nightmare, she told herself. Just a nightmare, one of those awful middle of the night terrors. One where she hadn't been able to move, or scream, or breathe, trapped prisoner inside her own body, struggling to get out. A nightmare of her blood rushing the wrong way, heartbeat out of synch, and yelling, screaming, without a hope of sound, knowing, _knowing_...

_Did you see something?_ Andy had asked, and she'd said no because the only proper answer was always no. No one wanted to listen to imaginings. Police officers dealt in facts, not figments.

Unless...

_If you remember anything,_ Harkness had said, ernest sincerity painted all across his face. _Anything strange or unusual..._ Spooks, Andy had called them. Demon hunters. _Torchwood_.

It was just imaginings. Just a nightmare. Gwen's head still hurt, her skin still wanted to flinch, but she made herself take deep breaths and turned off the light, slipping soundlessly back into the bedroom. Rhys was still asleep, the street lamp painting thin lines of light across the bare line of one out flung leg as he sprawled across the bed. _Deep breaths_, Gwen reminded herself, and crept quietly past the piles of laundry that whispered in muted voices to tell her where they were, and out into the hall.

Her phone link was in her jacket pocket, hung across the tree by the door, but she had to turn out all of the pockets of that jacket and her other coat besides before she found the card that Harkness had given her. She knew it the moment her fingers brushed it; it burst into her like a physical shock, too much sensation of large, warm hands which _weren't_ Rhys', of secrets piled on secrets all sealed with a stark T made of hexagons, like a cross section of a bee hive and the buzz of the bees was the drone of bodies stored in cold and ice, and the clipped bark of a hand gun, and...

Gwen made herself breathe, muting the whispers, and took the card to the far end of the sofa, where the light from the street lamps was just enough to resolve flat gray into dark printed letters on a cream surface if she squinted hard. Her phone link chirped softly when she thumbed it on; it was four in the morning, it told her. Too early by far, but she was honest enough to admit that she would have talked herself out of it by breakfast, never mind proper business hours. It always looked so much sillier by the light of day, nothing but hysterical fits and night terrors.

Biting her lip, she carefully keyed in the numbers printed on the card. They'd have an answering service, she told herself, pressing the phone link gingerly to her ear to listen to the click of the operator line going through. Some big fancy office, probably nicer than the police station, and an answering service to take after hours calls. She'd just leave her name and number and ask them to call her back. It'd still sound nothing but nonsense during the day, but she fancied Harkness' voice, that edge to it that he'd had, might make it easier to say.

"We _need_ this," Jack ground out between gritted teeth, working hard to keep his growing temper out of his voice. "The investigation..."

"Has been mishandled from the start," Yvonne Hartman snapped back, overriding him. Torchwood's executive director was alarmingly awake for the pre-dawn hour of the morning Jack had chosen to contact her. It had cocked up his entire hope of catching her in a half-awake - and more pliable - state, and had sent the conversation spiraling downwards ever since, driven by the snappish state of Hartman's own temper. Jack, instead of having the upper hand, was struggling to avoid the shrapnel fallout of whatever had already roused Yvonne from her bed and was keeping her up to deal with things at ungodly hours of the morning in London. "Honestly, Harkness, what were you _thinking_? Were you thinking at all? It's a police investigation, it has nothing to do with Torchwood."

"We were _asked_ to look into it," Jack replied as evenly as he could. The one hard truth of their working arrangement was that Torchwood's current director could wind him up simply by saying his _name_. The antagonism between them was apparently the stuff of water-cooler gossip legend in the London offices, and Jack would have had to admit that it wasn't without cause. His conversations with Yvonne tended towards either the loud and explosive, or the cold and brief, and this one had already passed beyond any comfortable realm of 'brief'.

Biting back a sigh, he leaned back in his chair, spine popping in a muted crackle. "They've got reason to be concerned," he said, trying to project his best reasonable tone of voice. "Owen said..."

"Doctor Harper," Yvonne replied scathingly, "is a competent physician and an excellent xenobiologist. He is _not_ a crime scene forensic scientist."

"Be that as it may," Jack said, "but you have to admit that he has a hell of a lot of experience with autopsies that look _wrong_. Which this one did. In order to correlate it and track the pattern we need access to the previous victims..."

"Absolutely _not_," Yvonne snapped. "Even if I wanted to you know I can't, and the political backlash in the Old Believer community doesn't even bear thinking about. It's a _murder_ investigation at best, Harkness, and Torchwood is not in the business of policing the _people_ of this empire. Let the constabulary do their own job."

It was far too tempting to rip the receiver from his ear and throw it at the wall. Jack restrained himself, curling his hands around the arms of his chair until the edge of the polished wood bit into his palms. "If the threat came through the Rift..."

"You have nothing to substantiate that with," Yvonne said dismissively. If he closed his eyes Jack could only too vividly picture the arrogant expression on her face - lovely woman, he'd thought to himself, the first time he met her. That had only lasted a few moments past when she had opened her mouth. Yvonne Hartman had far too many sharp edges and vicious ambition to suit anyone's idea of beauty, no matter how perfectly coifed her heavy, gold hair was. "You said yourself that your contacts confirmed that there are deaths that match the pattern further afield than the area around the Rift. Speaking of which," she added sharply, and Jack bit back a groan, "have you been doing anything other than haring off after this wild goose chase? Cardiff's reports are _not_ on my desk, Harkness."

_No,_ Jack wanted to say, _they're on_ mine, _on the top of my inbox right were Ianto left them days ago_, but while it had the advantage of putting the blame squarely on himself and not the rest of his team it also wouldn't do his cause any good whatsoever. "There's been very little Rift activity lately. We're perfectly on top of it."

"Meaning," Yvonne noted, her voice through the phone line dismissive, "that you're bored. I'm sure that's all well and good, Harkness, but side projects are _not_ to get in the way of Torchwood's business and those reports should have been submitted last week. In fact," she added, her tone brightening, and oh, that was _never_ a good sign, "given the lateness and irregularity, I think perhaps they should be filed in person."

Jack gritted his teeth. "I can't afford to reduce our field team for the day it would take Ianto to..."

"I wasn't speaking of the young Mister Jones," Yvonne told him, her tone smugly pleased. "I meant you, Captain. It's been far too long since you've graced us with your presence here in London."

He had, Jack thought bitterly, walked right into that one. He swallowed down a few choice curses. "My team..."

"Should be able to survive without you for a day, Captain," Yvonne interjected smoothly. "Particularly if it's been as quiet as you say. Besides, Miss Costello is an excellent field operative, with potential leadership qualities. Isn't that what you said on her last review? One has to let the chicks spread their wings at some point, don't you think?"

Jack ground his teeth hard enough to make his jaw hurt, glaring up at the ceiling of his office. "It would take me away from the team for three days, Director. When we're in the middle of an investigation - _not_ acceptable."

"An investigation you will be turning back over to the police," Yvonne told him pointedly. "That's an order, Captain Harkness." She sighed, the sound whispering through Jack's headset. "It would only cost you one day if you'd just take the skyline instead of the rails. I realize you have some sort of phobia..."

"I like to think of it as self preservation," Jack told her sourly. "I realize the word 'Hindenberg' is before _my_ time, never mind before yours..."

"I'm willing to make allowances for your peculiarities, Captain," Yvonne replied magnanimously. "Also, I realize that public relations in Cardiff require some care. You have two days to sort things with the police and make sure your people are well versed in their jobs. I will expect you here, in London, by the end of the week, with those reports in hand - I don't particularly care _how_ you get here, just make sure that you do."

"Yes, Ma'am," Jack sighed, but the connection had already gone dead, the line buzzing sullenly in his ear. He swore, clicking it off, and made himself put the headset down with all due care on the desk - breaking things for the sake of temper was a costly habit to get into.

It didn't, however, keep him from slamming the office door back on its hinges when he opened it, or kicking it viscously shut behind him. Suzie, still seated at her desk with the latest round of modified Rift Monitor blueprints spread out before her, pen in hand, looked up as Jack came stomping down the steps. "Well," she said with thin levity, "that looks like it went about as well as expected."

"Oh, it went better than that," Jack growled. He grabbed Tosh's empty chair, swinging it around to throw himself into, the momentum skidding it across the floor to come to a jarring stop against the corner of Suzie's desk. "She wants me to report. In person."

Suzie winced and sat back, stretching out her shoulders, the pen absently tucked into the bound back knot of her hair. "I _told_ you I kept getting the cold shoulder. Calling her up at this hour probably didn't help. So she wants you there in person to chew you out?"

"Something like that," Jack agreed, scrubbing his hands over his face. Around them the main room of the Hub was quiet, the others long since gone for the night. Sighing, he stretched his legs out, slinking lower in the chair. "Yvonne also wants us to drop the investigation. Give it back to the police."

The response from his second was a few moments in coming, the silence stretching just long enough to make Jack look up. Suzie had her head propped against her fist, elbow planted on her desk, her expression thoughtful. "Might not be so bad," she suggested. "Ianto and Tosh haven't found anything."

"It's only been three days," Jack growled, frustrated. "Owen..."

"Can't prove anything if he doesn't have anything to examine," Suzie pointed out reasonably. "We're not going to get authorization to do any postmortem exams on the previous deaths. So short of waiting around for another one to happen..." She spread her hands.

"The police aren't going to be able to stop whatever is doing this," Jack snapped.

"There's no guarantee we can either," Suzie said, shrugging. "There's no guarantee it's not something in the water, or a rash of tainted drugs, or who knows what. We're chasing phantom, Jack."

Jack covered his eyes with his palm, digging into the pain that was centered in the bones around the sockets. "Someone has to. I thought that was our job description."

Suzie snorted softly. "Of course it is. Right up there with 'die young and leave a good looking corpse.'" She kicked his ankle lightly. "Still working on that second part, right, boss?"

"You have _no_ idea," Jack groaned. "You should head out. Get some sleep. Work to do, tomorrow."

"Well, now that I'm sure you and the Director aren't going to set things on fire..." Suzie drawled. Jack tipped his head back and listened to her grab her jacket, her chair squeaking as she shoved it back and stood upright. He reached out and snagged her as she passed him, hooking fingers in the cuff of her sleeve.

"Yvonne wants you in charge while I'm gone," he told her quietly. "I need you here and dependable, Suzie."

Her fingers slid through his with a faint squeeze. "Sober as a church mouse," she promised. "I'll even keep Owen from getting too bored. It'll be fine." Jack nodded and leaned back, closing his eyes, and listened to her steps fade across the walk, up the shallow steps and the muted alarm and metal on metal heavy clang of the main door sliding open and closed.

He counted twenty breaths after she was gone, then twenty more for good measure, before sitting up and sliding his chair around to the front of her desk.

Suzie was depressingly predictable; he found the little silver hip flask tucked into the bottom drawer of her desk, behind the file folders. Three fourths full, liquid sloshing inside, and he had to smile - it had been one hell of a night, culminating in that failed encounter with Yvonne Hartman, and he rather thought he was perfectly justified in needing a drink or two. He also thought he might be justified in cleaning out Suzie's stash; she had kept it clean since the investigation had started, she was always at her best when there was something to _do_, but if they were going back to standby again then it couldn't hurt to take the temptation away.

There was maybe four fingers of liquor left in the flask - scotch, Jack was guessing, Suzie seemed like the type of woman who would drink scotch, or maybe rum - which wasn't nearly enough to get him drunk but might at least ease some of the burning need to put his fist through things that Yvonne brought out in him. Swinging his feet up to prop them on the corner of the desk, he settled down, unscrewed the top of the flask, and tipped back a generous measure of the contents, hoping that Suzie was indulgent enough to stash something good and not cheap.

It went down wet and lukewarm, not harsh at all, and Jack slowly sat back up again, frowning, as he sniffed at the flask. _Water_. It was nothing but _water_.

Suzie was either more cautious than he had given her credit for or... but no. He had seen her sneak sips from the flask before, had seen her pour shots into her coffee on some mornings. The flask didn't smell of any type of liquor, though, not old remnants or fresh spirits. Just water and metal and Jack took another sip just to be sure but... no. It was just water.

He was frowning, still trying to figure that out - if Suzie had gone cold sober it was _good_ but it was also going to be a long few weeks of aftermath and he wasn't sure he was really up to babysitting her through it on top of everything else right then - when the phones rang. Jack checked but the incoming number wasn't one he recognized; he hesitated, then let it roll to tape after four rings. A woman's voice, a little breathy and hushed with the round vowels of a local accent, came through the line. "Hello, yes... my name's Gwen Cooper, I was given this number by Captain Harkness..."

She didn't have a chance to get any further. Straightening up, Jack made a long armed reach for a headset discarded on the edge of Suzie's desk, thumbing the connection on. "PC Cooper? Good morning. This is Jack Harkness."


	6. Chapter Six

She was, Gwen could admit to herself, nervous, which was absolutely ridiculous and completely inescapable at the same time. The pub was more of a "grab a pint after work and jeer at sports teams" sort of joint than a place for anyone on the pull, and Gwen herself was still half in uniform, though she'd taken off her cap and jacket. Still, it felt more than a little skeevy, given that she'd called Rhys to tell him she'd be late with work and not to worry about holding dinner for her, and then turned around and rushed Andy through their reports for the day so that she could duck out just a bit early. She should, she thought, have just told Rhys that she was going out with some of the girls for a drink - he went with his chums often enough, it oughtn't to matter.

The waitress had just placed a lime and tonic in front of her and bustled away when the chair across from her was pulled out. "This seat taken?" someone asked and Harkness was there, all long coat and charming smile, sliding into the chair across from her. "Fancy seeing you again, Officer Cooper."

Gwen tried to smile, felt it mostly fail due to nerves, and settled for taking a quick sip of her drink to wet her suddenly dry throat. "Captain Harkness. Thank you for coming out."

Harkness smiled. He was, she thought despairingly, infernally handsome, in an irregular sort of way that drew the eye, particularly when he smiled. What had Andy called him? Harkness the Eternal. Rubbish, but he certainly had the type of smile that people would want to immortalize in some fashion. He was also, however, all business, with a brisk demeanor and a stare that left her feeling like she was pinned to a mounting board. "No trouble at all. You said you had something regarding the case? Something you saw?"

Gwen took a deeper breath, cradling the reassuring chill of her ice filled glass between her hands. It wasn't, she told herself, going to get any easier. All the same, the words were thick in her throat, sluggish as cold syrup and twice as heavy with the weight of years of silence. She couldn't remember the last time she had said them, or if she ever had, but there was something in Harkness' clear, direct stare that made her choke them out. "Y-yes. The... the man who died. I caught him when he fell; I was trying to do CPR. I... I _Saw_ him."

Harkness was just waiting, politely interested, hands clasped on the table in front of him, and Gwen flushed, realizing the words were too ambiguous for any accuracy. "I _Saw_ him," she repeated, trying to put the proper emphasis on it. She tried to clear her throat, couldn't, and dropped her voice lower; it was easier to pretend she wasn't saying it if she didn't put too much breath into it. "I... sometimes when I touch things, or people, I can... _See_... things about them, things I don't know..."

Harkness sat up straighter, his interest palpably sharpening. "Psychometry?" he asked, but Gwen had to shake her head at the unfamiliar term and Harkness made an impatient gesture. "Seeing. You're saying you're a touch seer, a reader."

Gwen couldn't quite suppress her cringing response, hunching down into her seat and unable to meet the man's gaze. "I... um. Yes? Sometimes. I... I try not to..."

There was no response for a moment, then the thin clink of metal on metal that she belatedly recognized as the sound of a buckle. Harkness' hands reached across the table, engulfing hers, and when Gwen looked up it was to find him pressing a wide band of warm, butter soft leather into her hands; a wrist strap of some sort, she thought, eyeing the thin red pressure marks around his forearm where his sleeve was pushed back.

"Tell me what you see," he told her, low and sincere, his fingers wrapped warm around her own. "How old is it?"

Gwen swallowed dryly. "I-I can't," she whispered. "Really, I can't, if I start then I can't _stop_, everything's so _loud_..."

He squeezed her hands. "I'll make sure it stops. I'll get you home safe. It's alright, Gwen. Just tell me what you see."

It was a test and she should have expected it - he could hardly just take her word for it, not for a criminal investigation. It wasn't even hard; she had spent all day desperately trying and failing to ignore the thin thread of whispers in everything around her, from every previous owner of her uniform to everyone who had ever ridden in the patrol coach, and Andy had been more than willing to let her go a little early, his brow creased in a sharp frown for the number of analgesics Gwen has swallowed throughout the day to try to blunt the ache in her head. The trick, she now remembered, had always been how hard it was to _not_ hear things once she started; the whispers were everywhere and she had to bite her lip raw on the inside to not talk back to them or make mention of them and give herself away.

The strap was wide and soft and silk smooth; it looked like it had once been a thick, heavy leather, but it had been worn into comfortableness and its whispers plucked and tickled through her fingers to echo through her mind. It was harder by far to ignore them than it was to close her eyes and let them come.

_How old?_ he had asked her, and she tried to focus on that; her first thought was "old" and it was followed quickly by "very old", a sheer weight of impressions flickering one after the other that spoke of time, years, decades. It went on from there, even more, and somewhere deep in its past there were... explosions, and men in dull green-grey gear that she didn't recognize, sharp edged guns that were all cylinders and rectangles stacked atop each other and lumbering vehicles that she had never seen, permeated with harsh chemical scents, and an impossible whistling shriek that sounded like some wounded beast and which trailed after the streak of strange, sharp things in the sky.

Gwen was halfway to her feet, only Harkness' firm grip on her wrists restraining her. "Old," she gasped, only half remembering the question asked, her ears echoing with the phantoms of shrieks and explosive booms older than her great grandfather, rest his soul. "So old... War, it's from the war..." She couldn't help flinching, ducking, from sounds and sensations hundreds of years gone. "So loud... Oh gods, what are those things?"

Then, just like that, it was gone. Harkness plucked the strap from her hands, wrapping her stiff fingers forcibly back around her glass, and just like that the whispers shifted. The boom and shriek was gone, replaced with the quiet clink of glass on glass and the endless babbling whisper of the background voices of a pub and the bartender's hands, his worry about his youngest boy who was doing poorly in school and the waitress' fretting about her latest fight with her girlfriend and thousands of other mundane secrets that a tumbler glass in a pub was privy to. Gwen took a shaky breath, slowly sinking back into her seat. She felt raw and conspicuous, her cheeks hot with embarrassment, but a quick glance showed that no one was looking. It took her twice just to find her voice, where it cracked in her throat. "Th-thank you."

Harkness shook his head. The strap was already back on his wrist, the end just peeking out of his sleeve. "No, thank _you_. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have given that to you as a test." He touched the backs of her hands briefly, a whisper of warmth and then gone, and the twist of his smile was bittersweet. "Tanks," he told her gently, "and jet fighters." She stared at him blankly and he shrugged. "You were asking what they were. If you were seeing one of the battles then it was probably tanks and jet fighters. Airplanes." He sketched a straight line in the air with his hand, angling up, like one of the smoke filled entrails of the sharp slivers in the sky that had flashed into her mind. Gwen shivered.

"So loud," she managed. "They were deafening... was that part of it? The noise? Was it a weapon?" She felt silly the moment she asked it - he wouldn't know any better than she, but all the same, if he was wearing the strap and obviously knew its history, then perhaps he was one of those amateur historian types who knew all the theories and details about things like that.

Harkness' smile turned up at the corners, tracing out fine laugh lines around his eyes. "No, not really. Not intentionally, anyways. Side effect of the speed - when something's that close to the sound barrier it's not exactly silent." It didn't mean anything to her, but the matter of factness of his tone was a soothing balm to the jangle of her nerves. "I'm sorry, but I had to make sure. You, Gwen Cooper, are definitely the real deal." He gave her a look that she might have found charming if she wasn't still shivering, but when he pressed her glass to her she drank it on reflex, the water clearing her throat. "So... tell me about our deceased friend."

It brought it all back in a rush, the nightmare that she hadn't been able to escape for days, growing worse each night as it thundered through her head until she had finally picked up the phone the night before, unable to ignore it. "He was scared," she whispered, her hands tightening on the reassuring shape of the glass between her palms. "He was so, so scared... terrified. He couldn't talk, he couldn't scream, he couldn't _move_. It was like a nightmare, except he was wide away." Harkness' eyes were on her, too sharp and seeing; Gwen looked away, but the dull surface of the table only brought back the image of the man's face, his eyes white rimmed and horrified. "He... it was like... being a puppet. He was moving, walking, but he didn't mean to, he didn't _want_ to. It _hurt_, it was terrible, like his blood was burning inside him, so much pain and he was so scared. He couldn't stop walking, he didn't have any choice, everything just kept _moving_ and his heart was giving out, he _knew_ he was dying."

Harkness' hands came back, covering hers in a warm press, and the whispers off of skin were always so muted and muddy compared to the impressions that lingered in objects that she could shove them off easier, just a dull, indistinct noise that didn't mean anything and that, in itself, was comforting. "Like a puppet," Harkness echoed. "He wasn't the one in control, then? Like... like something else was riding him?"

"Yes!" Gwen gasped. The relief of having said it, of having Harkness take her seriously and believe it, burst so warm in her stomach that it blotted out all of the impressions entirely for several long moment. "Yes, exactly. Like something else was inside of him, making him walk, making him move, and it was hurting him horribly to do it but he didn't have a choice."

Harkness sucked in a sharper breath. "Alright," he said darkly. "_Good_. That gives us something to go on, a direction to move in. That's good, Gwen, and you're right, that's _very_ important. Thank you."

"It helps?" Gwen asked. "It didn't... it seemed like a nightmare, something crazy, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it."

"No," Harkness assured her, "no, that really does help me." He grinned, then, bright and happy, but Gwen thought it was the sort of happy that spelled trouble for other people. "You might have just saved this whole investigation." He looked at her, then, considering, and his fingers were curled warm around her wrists, tips pressed against her pulse. "How do you feel?"

It made her pulse jump - the twist of his smile told her he could feel it - and just like that it came crashing in on her, creeping up out of nowhere to smother her in a thick blanket of fatigue. She tried and failed to bite back a yawn, her eyes sagging. "Tired," she breathed, and saying it made it absolutely true. "I'm just... I'm really tired all of a sudden." Harkness just smiled, watching her, his hands on her wrists, monitoring, and her hands still clasped around the glass that he had pushed into them.

Gwen's heart skipped another beat, adrenaline fighting in vain with the heavy press of fatigue. "What... what did you do?"

Harkness' fingers pressed her wrists, comforting. "Just a sedative," he told her. "Nothing to be worried about, just a bit of light sedative. I told you I'd make it right, didn't I? I've never seen any seer who couldn't reset themselves after a good night's sleep - you just don't look like you've had one recently." He patted her hands, then pushed back his chair and stood, reaching down to hook her underneath her elbows and effortlessly pull her up. "Ianto's outside with our coach. We'll get you home, safe and sound, and you just need to sleep it off. Tonight might be a little spotty in your memory when you wake up - don't worry about it. Just get some sleep, and tomorrow will be back to normal." He gathered up her jacket and cap with his free hand, steadying her with the other, and pressed them into her arms. Gwen wanted to protest, but she was yawning and her eyes felt fuzzy and it was easier, by far, to lean against the solid warmth of him then it was to shake him off.

Harkness produced another card, waving it in front of her until she focused on it, then slipped it into the pocket of her jacket. "If you think of anything else, don't hesitate to call," he told her. "Every little thing is important. Things like this? Are _really_ important. You've been a big help, Gwen." His hands on her shoulders helped to hold her up, steering her towards the door of the pub in a yawning haze. "Come on. Let's get you home."

It was going on towards late evening by the time Jack gathered his team back into the conference room, the Hub still redolent with the smells of the paper wrapped packages of fish and chips that Suzie had brought back from a local shop, and something sweet and mouth wateringly rich which Ianto and Tosh had concocted between them, which was still warming in the kitchen's tiny oven, waiting to be revealed. It was, Jack reflected wryly, infinitely easier to break the news of a potential all-nighter over contentedly full stomachs and everyone's second cup of after dinner coffee.

"Alright," he told them, rubbing his hands together with a clap to ease the warm, anticipatory feeling that always came from a new lead, a new direction, something that could actually be _done_. "We've had some new information on the murder cases. Time to change our game plan."

It woke them up a little, made them interested. Tosh looked relieved, Owen more alert. Suzie was the only one who frowned, her glance sharp. "New info? But... I thought Director Hartman wanted us to turn it back over to the police."

"Eh? When was that?" Owen asked. Jack waved the whole matter away with a sharp hand.

"Last night, but in light of new developments this is _not_ something the police are going to be able to deal with," he told them briskly. "Tosh, I need every scrap of data you can find between the victims correlated. Age, family, employment, belief, if they all rode the same streetcar or ate at the same pub or just passed by the same street corner, anything they have in common, we need to know what it is. Ianto, I need you to go back through the archives again. We're looking for something non-corporeal - something psychic or energy based, possibly parasitic or which can't survive in our atmosphere without a physical host, something that takes control and rides a man's body like a puppet. Owen, look through Torchwood's medical records for anything similar. Suzie, go back over the Rift records, every spike, every hiccup, every time it's so much as twitched - we need to know if we're dealing with one being or potentially several of them."

Suzie, however, had her hand half raised, signaling a pause as she chewed worriedly on her lower lip. "Jack... Yvonne said not to pursue this, didn't she?"

Smiling grimly, Jack leaned forward, bracing his hands on the table. "I'll fill Director Hartman in on the new information and the direction we're taking. I think even she'll have to admit the Cardiff constabulary aren't equipped to deal with a non-corporeal. Besides," he added lightly, scanning his team, "who signs your paycheques?"

"You do, sir," Ianto replied promptly.

"But Hartman signs _yours_," Owen noted.

Jack shrugged. "Then I'll take the fall for it if she gets her stockings in a twist." He laughed, with no real humor in it. "What's she going to do - shoot me?"

Tosh sketched a quick warding gesture against ill luck, her mouth set in an unhappy line, and Ianto smiled tightly and shoved his chair back. "Right, then. I'll put another pot of coffee on, shall I?"

"You alright, then?" Andy asked her the next morning, concerned. "Just... you were looking a bit peaked, yesterday. Not coming down with something, are you?"

"No," Gwen assured him, dredging up an honest smile. "No, nothing like that. I just hadn't been sleeping much... well, since..." she waved a hand vaguely and her partner nodded, his mouth thin. "It's fine, though," she told him brightly. "Got a good night last night, right as rain today." Which was actual truth; she'd slept through the night dead to the world and woken up in the morning with her head uncluttered and blessedly quiet, all the whispers dampened to a barely perceptible murmur. Rhys had fussed over her after her 'co-worker' - "Inspector chap, from the station," Rhys had said, and Gwen had vaguely recalled the younger man, Ianto Jones, guiding her up the steps to her flat - had dropped her off with instructions to let her sleep off a dose of 'cold tonic'. Rhys had fussed at her for not telling him she was coming down with something, fussed at her for staying late to work, fussed at her for not taking a sick day, and had then made her a right proper breakfast and brought it to her in bed that morning with a hot cuppa. Gwen had to admit it had made her feel a hundred times better than she had the day before.

All the same, she had dug out the thin liners of her winter weight gloves and slipped them on, blaming a faint lingering chill. They were hers, bought new, and there was nothing to them but her own thoughts and feelings, wrapping her up securely and turning even the faint muted murmurs into beautiful silence. She felt like herself again and told Andy so, which seemed to satisfy her partner.

They had stopped for coffee mid morning - there were half a dozen places along their patrol route that were good for it and Andy seemed to think that keeping Gwen warm and caffeinated was the right thing to do, a sentiment she was hardly going to argue against - when she fished in her pocket for her keys and came up with the card instead. In the light of day it was an elegant card of cream linen, the sepia ink raised in neat, shiny lines that traced out the interlocked cells of the T and a muted flourish.

She still had it in her hands when Andy returned to the coach, a steaming cup clutched in either hand. "Here we go, then," he declared, sliding one carefully onto the dash in front of her. "Cream, two sugars, and a shot of that cocoa you like." He did a small double take, frowning, when he saw what she was holding. "Oh, hey... you still have that?"

It was on the tip of Gwen's tongue to laugh it off as nothing, to toss the card into the depression between their seats or shove it back into her pocket, but it was Andy. _Andy_, who had his faith inked on the inside curve of his arm, who had lived his entire life in the Old Quarter, who, for all she knew, lit incense and left teaspoons of honey offerings on an altar at home before he left for work every morning. Instead, what came out of her mouth was "...you believe in seers, don't you?"

He just snorted - plain, sensible, no-nonsense Andy, even if his 'plain and sensible' included things she'd always dismissed or politely turned a blind eye to. "Old believer, remember?" he told her, grinning. "Can't throw a rock in the Quarter without hitting a seer. Sure, lots of 'em are fakes, but some are the real deal. Why? You and Rhys looking to tie the knot and need a prediction?"

"Don't even joke!" Gwen had said reflexively. "My mum'd have a fit." She flipped the card over, eyeing the number printed on the back. Just that, logo and number, no address or name or anything else. Gwen bit her lip, feeling some of the flutter deep in her stomach of the day before returning, and took a deep breath. "No, I... I called them. Torchwood. Yesterday."

Andy blinked. "Why?"

It was harder in the daylight but the quiet of the coach interior, blocking out the sounds of the street they were parked on, helped. It was maybe a little easier than she expected and Gwen wondered, wildly, if it would be easier every time she had to say it, and how many more times she might have to. Could it ever be as easy as saying her name, second nature, just a part of who she was? It made her stomach drop nastily inside of her and she wrenched her thoughts away, made herself not think about it. "Ever hear of touch readers?"

"Sure," Andy replied promptly. "Object seeing. It's just another type of mojo, no different than pushers or fire starters. Easier to fake, maybe, but it's easy enough to test accuracy on any honest seer. Why?" And then, bless him, his gaze dropped to the card in her hands, and her _hands_, and the thin-knit black lining gloves she'd pulled on to protect them.

"...Gwen?" Andy's voice was gentle and quiet, soothing, and his fingers, slipping warm between her own, moved slowly enough that she didn't flinch. He turned her hand over, the card laying limp in her palm as he studied her shrouded fingers, and he never even asked her what she meant. "What did you See?"

It was an entirely different question from what he had asked before, with capital letters and emphasis that Gwen could feel. She let her breath out in a rush, almost light headed. "I try not to," she said quickly, apologetic. "I really do, and most times there's nothing, there hasn't been anything in _years_, but sometimes... I couldn't help it. It was just _there_. Andy... Andy, there was something really _wrong_ with that man who died. Really horribly wrong, and I just _wish_ I'd seen it better, clearer, seen something _more_ that would really help because whatever was wrong with him they need to stop it before it happens again."

That, there - that was what haunted her nightmares, more than the echo of being trapped in her own body, screaming soundlessly. The real horror was that it - whatever it was - was still _out_ there, uncaught, unconvicted, free and waiting to strike again. Demons, Andy had said, and maybe she was willing to believe after all, in demons that walked inside a man's skin and drove his terrified heart to bursting and that scared her more than any armed or strung-out criminal ever had.

Andy's fingers tightened around her own. He was looking just past her, somewhere into the distance, something thoughtful tugging at the line of his mouth and brow. "How far back can you go?" he asked her. "Could you read something a few days old, or a week?"

Gwen blinked, startled and nonplussed at his matter of fact acceptance. "I... yes? Days or weeks, I can do that. Why?"

Andy grinned and for once it wasn't an entirely nice expression, one part mischievous boy and one part the type of man Gwen swore she would never, ever, trust in a game of cards. "Because there's all kinds of crime scene things bagged up and filed in Evidence, and Rich owes me a favor or three." Gwen opened her mouth to object and Andy shook his head, reaching for the cup on the dash and pressing it into her hands. "Seer readings aren't admissible in a court of law, but it's not the law going after whatever this is. It's Torchwood. They'll listen. You game?"

It was dizzying and not a little bit like being drunk, the heady feeling that came with his ready acceptance and willingness to not only listen, but _help_. Gwen swallowed a mouthful of coffee, ignoring the hot sting of it, and let it flush heat through her chest and stomach as she caught her breath. It wasn't right, she knew, and she ought to object for that alone - it was something both of them could get in trouble for, but the temptation to _do_ something, to find whatever it was and help to bring it down, beat like a palpable thing in her nerves. "I... Yeah. Yeah, alright."


	7. Chapter Seven

"Here you go, luv," Suzie said breezily, sliding the steaming mug onto the desk beside Tosh's elbow. "Nice and extra hot - gotta keep you warm. Find anything new yet?"

"Besides a headache?" Tosh replied, flashing the other woman a grateful smile as she wrapped her fingers around the mug. Suzie gave her a sympathetic grimace and Tosh sighed, shrugging. "Not really. There's too many variables, too many things that _could_ be variables and aren't recorded." She frowned thoughtfully at her monitor, eyes crinkled slightly as she squinted at the steady pulse of a search query in mid-stream. "I just don't know."

"You and me both," Suzie said, crossing back to her own desk. "But fearless leader says to keep looking, so we keep looking." Two key taps brought her monitor back online, the click-tap of her typing filling the quiet.

"Are you doing reports?" Toshiko asked, curious, because even reports were better than staring at the slow progression of a status bar as her search ran. She slid her chair across the distance between their desks, squinting harder at the blurred shapes on the other woman's screen.

"Just catching up on paperwork," Suzie told her. Her fingers came down hard on keys - Suzie typed the same way she welded, Tosh thought - and the screens disappeared, one after another, as the multi-hued lines of the Rift Monitor reappeared. "I'm waiting for the Monitor to print out a variable report for last month."

"Seems like we're both hurrying up and waiting, then," Tosh sighed. "I wonder if Owen needs any help?"

"Only if you can make his terminal run faster searches too," Suzie replied. "I think Ianto's the only one actually _doing_ anything. Hey, do you want..." but she broke off there as the phones rang and Suzie, with a little sigh, slid her headset on and toggled the line. "Torchwood, Costello speaking."

Tosh pushed her chair back over to her own desk, sighing again at the barely perceptible progress of the bar, and pulled the crocheted throw that she had filched from the back of the sofa earlier tighter around her shoulders. Across the way she could hear the quiet hum of Suzie's voice - "yes" and "of course" and "I'll be sure to tell him - would four o'clock be alright?" as the other woman jotted down a note, probably for Jack.

When the call ended Suzie went back to typing for a bit, key commands and query strings, then the other woman stood, spine cracking as she stretched her arms tall overhead. "Alright," she said. "This thing's got at least another hour to run. I need to stop by the market and pick up some things, run them home, if I'm going to eat for the rest of the week. Might grab lunch on the way. You want me to bring you back anything?"

"No," Tosh said. "There's some leftovers in the icebox from yesterday, I'm good. Thank you."

"Suit yourself," Suzie replied, grabbing up the shapeless bulk of her coat. "Back later, then. Ta!"

The other woman left and Tosh, sighing, went back to her terminal. She left the first search running and pulled up sheet after sheet of data points, names and details of potential victims, scrolling through them one after another in a vague attempt to spark some new idea. She was three quarters of the way through the stack when a niggling idea occurred to her and her hands, warmed and limber from the heat of her tea mug, slid easily onto her keyboard, tapping out a new list of points to compare.

It might have been minutes or hours when heavy hands came down on her shoulders from behind, making Tosh yelp and jump. "Hey, hey," Jack soothed, grinning, and gave her a squeeze. "Just me, beautiful. Got anything new?"

Tosh blinked, refocusing. The clock on the corner of her desk indicated over an hour gone, her previous search nearing completion, and she hadn't realized how cold her feet had gotten or the hungry rumblings of her stomach. "I... maybe? There might be something."

Jack squeezed her shoulders again, leaning over the back of her chair. "Show me."

Biting her lip, Tosh turned her hands back to the keyboard, bringing up records and data. "Here," she said, pointing, the blunt tip of her nail clicking against the screen. "And here, and here, in the medical records. I saw it just by accident, but then I kept seeing it so I went back and checked. It's true for all of the victims - they all, within the last six months, have been to a clinic or hospital."

Behind her she could feel Jack lean in further, his attention sharp and palpable as she scrolled through the records on screen. "Same locations?" he asked, and Tosh shook her head.

"No, they're all over. The Quarter's A&amp;E, five different clinics, two hospitals out on the industrial side - there's no pattern, either in where or when. But," Tosh added, taking a deep breath, "there is _this_. Every single one of them had blood drawn."

Jack went still. "That was what I first noticed," Tosh told him hastily. "The same procedure code in the medical records. I thought maybe it might actually be a disease, or something passed through normal means that manifests itself as symptoms before going live. If they were testing for the same things or running diagnostics for the same symptoms... but they're all different. There's no pattern except that they were all in for treatment for different things." She sighed, slipping her glasses off and tossing them on the desktop. "Seems like a fussy sort of thing for our usual Rift visitors."

"Maybe," Jack said slowly. Tosh twisted to look up at him, but he was focused intently on her screen. "Tosh... can you bring these up on a map for me?"

"Yes, of course," Tosh agreed, fumbling for her glasses. A few keystrokes brought up a map of the greater Cardiff region, sketched out in white street lines on a dark screen. Another command brought out the scattered dots of healthcare facilities in lurid green, and then one by one they blinked out again in response to the quick tap of Tosh's typing, leaving only the pertinent ones highlighted. Finished, she sat back with a sigh. "See? There's no real pattern."

"No," Jack agreed. He reached out, tracing over the random splash of dots in a loose circle, then spiraled inward, his finger tapping over the empty area where the Hub sat. "Except that they're all within about half an hour of here." He sighed, straightening. "Print those out for me, will you? Where's Suzie? We're going to need to check these."

"Oh!" Tosh glanced across to the other woman's desk, but it was unchanged. "She left for lunch, said she had to go to the market. She had a message for you."

Jack blinked sharply. "A message?"

"Someone called," Tosh clarified, pushing back her chair. "She took a message..." The note pad on the edge of Suzie's desk was empty, however, and all of the scraps of paper only turned up bits and pieces of Rift Monitor schematics. "I don't see it."

Jack was frowning. "How long ago?" he asked.

"An hour," Tosh replied. "She should be back soon."

Jack, jaw set sharply, leaned over the back of Suzie's chair and thumbed the phone record. Something Tosh couldn't interpret flickered over his face at the number there. "Toshiko," he said slowly, "where's Suzie?"

"I told you," Tosh said, frowning. There was something in the man's tone she didn't like, something that made her shift uncomfortably and rub at the prickle of goose bumps on her arms. "She went to lunch."

Jack shook his head. "No," he said, fixing her with a stern look. "I need you to tell me _where she is_. Right now. This could be important."

"Oh!" Tosh said, and then, because it was Jack asking, because she always did when he asked, she found herself back in her chair, her glasses folded away, the throw tucked tight around her shoulders. Jack flipped a printed map open across her desk, the sheets worn in the folded creases and marked and stained across the laminated front. Tosh took a deeper breath, let him lift her hand to the map, and then let her eyes drift unfocused, the thought and image of the other woman bright and clear in her mind.

She never remembered, not really - there was the sensation of falling, or flying, of everything spread out tiny and dim below her except for the bright pulse of what she was looking for, and then she was back to herself again, dropped into heavy flesh and cold bones with a jolt that took her breath away. Jack's hand was on her shoulder, tapping her cheek, burning hot and insistent. "Tosh, Tosh, sweetheart, come on, open your eyes."

"I'm fine," Tosh gasped, and Jack grinned, bright and pleased.

"There's my girl. Owen! Owen, get up here, stat, I need you to sit with Tosh!"

"I'm fine," Tosh tried to protest again, but it came out with the click of her teeth chattering, and Jack hastily draped another blanket over her, tucking it tight. It was a light chill, though, nothing like the bone deep misery of a long search, and Tosh didn't think it could have taken her more than half a minute to find Suzie, not when the other woman was so familiar to her. There was nothing on the map to mark whatever she'd told Jack, but she felt like she ought to know, on the edges of her memory, vision of paving stones and the brisk, chill wind off the water.

Owen, his face set into one of the more irritated of his scowls, came storming up from the autopsy bay. "Oh yeah, sure," he snapped, half shoving Jack out of the way, "don't stress Tosh, you say, but it's alright if _you_ do!" It was all bark, though, the scowl softening as the doctor reached for her hands, palmed her cheek and tipped her head back to look at her eyes in the light, and Tosh leaned into the warmth of his hands and let him.

"I've got to go," Jack said, and Tosh roused herself to try to fumble for her headset.

"Ianto..."Owen and she never went in the field, which only left the archivist if Jack and Suzie needed backup.

"Leave him," Jack told her sharply. "I'll take care of it. Stay here. Owen, stay with her." He swept out without giving Tosh time to protest, and the feel of what she had Seen for him, the hints of a location, were fading like melting frost through her fingers.

Owen clucked, tucking her hands back beneath the blanket. "You'll be fine," he told her, and the words might have been rote but Tosh trusted them every time the doctor said them. "Come on, let's get you to the sofa. I'll get you a hot pack, heat up some tea for you. Jack's a big boy, he can take care of himself."

It was little more than an abandoned warehouse, much less hospitable than the pub from the day before, Gwen thought, tucking her jacket closer around her to ward off the wind as she shifted from foot to foot. She wondered what Torchwood could be doing in places like that but the answer - multiple of them, each more fanciful than the rest - was all too easy to imagine.

The day had turned cold and overcast, promising rain later, and this close to the docks everything smelled of damp mustiness and sea water. Andy, bless his heart, had promised to take care of her reports for her; had all but shoved her out the door, coach keys in her hand, but only after he had plied her with hot tea and a hearty meal that had helped to steady her after the bursts of images she had gleaned from the evidence he had tipped into her hands, one after another. A charm, a bit of cloth, an earring, the broken band of a watch, things that had been swept up after their owners to be bagged and filed in neat records dated with time and place and case number. Gwen couldn't even remember what they looked like, but she could recall the sensations pouring off of them only too well, and it made her shiver worse than the wind did.

"PC Cooper?"

The voice, only vaguely familiar, made Gwen start. It was a woman's voice but the figure that approached her, hands held free of pockets in a peaceable sort of way, was dressed in a man's work coat, braces and trousers shoved into heavy work boots, a newsboy's cap pulled down on tied back hair. The woman - it _was_ a woman - was almost pretty, though, Gwen could see as she came closer, with thin features and an apologetic smile. "Suzie Costello," she introduced herself when she was close enough, hand held out. "We spoke on the phone. I'm sorry, Jack's been delayed, he asked me to come meet you."

"Of course," Gwen replied automatically, reaching to take her hand. She didn't, she realized, have any concept of how many people worked for Torchwood - she had been envisioning something like the crowded bustle of the police station, but thus far she had only seen Harkness and the neatly put together younger man who seemed to shadow him, Jones. She thought there had been mention of a doctor at the hospital, and now this woman, Suzie, who looked as though she could fit in with any of the dock or factory workers. All of the ideas of what Torchwood might be doing near the abandoned areas came back, and she wondered if the woman was working undercover somewhere nearby. "Sorry... this isn't out of your way, is it?"

Suzie laughed. She had a warm grip but there was something a bit brittle in her voice. "No... no, this is actually pretty close to our offices. No trouble at all."

Gwen couldn't resist a dubious glance around. "Here? But... I thought maybe..." she gestured vaguely, towards the Quarter and the nicer uptown neighborhoods beyond it.

The other woman grinned, amused. "You'd think so, wouldn't you? But sometimes it's better to be where people don't expect you to be." She turned sober quickly, and Gwen could see the echo of Harkness' focused intensity in her. "You said on the phone you had more information pertaining to the murder cases. Jack said it was important."

Gwen took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. "I hope so," she admitted. "I... I can do touch reading. Jack told you? Well, Andy - that's my partner, Andy Davidson - he got us into Records and Evidence. Had me try to take readings from some of the items recovered off of similar victims, the ones who died the same way." She shivered convulsively and Suzie obligingly stepped between her and the wind, offering Gwen a comforting pat on the shoulder.

Gwen swallowed, tucking her hands into her pockets. "They were all the same," she said hurridly. "All of them. They weren't themselves when they died. It's... it's like being locked inside this tiny portion of your own mind, helpless, watching while you do things that you have no control over. It comes on so sudden - one moment they're fine, the next... there's something burning through them, taking them over. It's horrible."

Suzie was watching her, her frown thoughtful, hands tucked away for warmth like Gwen's. "They could feel it?" she asked. Gwen nodded unhappily.

"Yes. It hurts. It hurts everywhere, like your blood's on fire." She shivered again, hugging herself closer. She was, she thought, going to need a very stiff drink and maybe a sleeping powder. Rhys was going to fuss horribly, and maybe she'd let him talk her into taking a sick day tomorrow, but it was worth it, every moment of it, because she could almost see the case coming together, one step closer to being solved, in the other woman's narrowed eyes and tiny frown. "It hurts, and they're afraid. Terrified. Screaming, but they can't make a sound. Once the control is gone, it's _gone_. They can't move or speak or do anything, just watch and _feel_."

Suzie huffed out an unhappy breath, tipping her head back. The wind whipped at loose tendrils of her hair. "...Bloody hell."

Something like hope bloomed warm in Gwen's chest. "You know what it is? What's doing it?"

The other woman scowled, lips twisted unhappily as she glanced back at Gwen. "Oh yes," she said, and there was the brittleness again, something that made Gwen want to step back. "Yes, but it's really not working like it should."

The words took entirely too long to resolve in Gwen's ears, echoing and re-echoing through her mind in nonsense patterns before coalescing into something that chilled her to the bone. Suzie tipped her head to the side and smiled, an expression equal parts wry and pleased, and she was human, _human_, perfectly human, not a demon at all.

Not, Gwen's mind reminded her, that she had any idea what a demon looked like. No one did. Maybe demons looked like perfectly normal women in workman's clothes.

Gwen took a half step back, hand dropping to her gun, but there was a terrible rushing _pop!_ that burst through her, half deafening her, and she _couldn't move_. Not a muscle, not a bit, not even to release the startled cry that was caught in her lungs or to blink away the wind that was tearing at her eyes. Muffled, like she was wrapped in cotton a million yards away, she could only watch as the other woman's smile broadened.

Suzie, grinning broadly, slipped her hands from her pockets, holding up a tiny glass vial no larger than the first joint of her thumb. There was something stuffed inside of it, white gauze splotched and stained dirty dull brown. "It's a funny thing," Suzie said conversationally, shaking the vial, "but in a competition between belief and greed, most people will pick hard cash over their religion. Especially under-paid assistant labor in hospitals, the ones who have to mop the floors and empty the bed pans and-" she shook the vial again "-clean up all of the used utensils and bandages, all of those messy bits with other people's blood on them."

The scream was just under Gwen's ribs, waiting to get out, but she couldn't move, couldn't so much as twitch, couldn't even feel her own limbs. The other woman tsked softly, shaking her head. "I was really hoping this was yours," she noted. "Just in case, you understand. Just if I needed it. Lucky me, you had that nasty little bump not too long ago, and that nice stint in the A&amp;E. They keep good records for me, there." Suzie laughed softly, and there was something softer in her smile now, something flushed warm and pleased over her cheeks. "It's not against the law, you know. Not really. It's _customary_, but there's no law about it. The _law_ says we can do anything we need to in order to protect the Empire, and that's what I'm doing. For Queen and Country," she declared, drawing herself up straight. "For Britain!"

She stepped closer, her hand brushing Gwen's cheek, but Gwen couldn't feel it, could only stare, unblinking, as the other woman leaned closer. "Here's the thing, though," Suzie said. "It's not supposed to hurt. They're not supposed to _feel_ anything. That's the whole _point_." Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes too bright, her gesture expansive as she indicated Gwen with a sweep of her hand. "If I can just isolate the parts that _feel_, if I can starve that part out - imagine. What would you be like if you couldn't feel fear? If you couldn't feel pain, or cold, or hunger. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine anything more perfect? Unafraid, unhindered - the _perfect_ soldier. Britain would never have to fear. All the boys and men who go to protect us - they'd never have to suffer."

She sighed, stepping back. "But now you're telling me it hurts, and that's not the point at all. That entirely _not_ the point. I can't even tell you how disappointed I am. This is _months_ of work being set back. Useless."

Her smile returned like quicksilver, too wide, bright and happy, and there was something horribly off about her laugh, drunk on nothing as something heated and burning hot swept through Gwen from head to toe. "I guess I can start now," Suzie told her, grinning. "I've never actually done this to someone this close before - you'll have to tell me if it hurts."

It was, possibly, the worst understatement Gwen had ever heard. The moment her body began to move - utterly against her will, every motion not her own - the fire consumed her. She was burning with it, her blood burning in every vein, molten hot liquid fire that coursed through her and licked and burned at every pained beat of her frantic heart. She screamed, or tried to, but not a sound came out; nothing but the whistle of the wind and the other woman's thoughtful hum and a ragged, animal sound that Gwen could only distantly identify as her own breath where it dragged, stuttering and awkward, from her lungs.

The pain hollowed her out inside, encompassing and drowning her, until her whole world was fire and burning and it took her long, horrible moments to realize that she _had_ moved, that her hand, her arm, was not her own - but the gun in her hand was, her own police issue pistol, tucked neatly into the grip of her own fingers that she couldn't feel in the slightest except for the burning agony of them. She couldn't move as she watched her own hand raise, watched her thumb take the safety off, the only things she could see being her own hand and that impossible gun and the other woman's tiny frown of concentration.

"If it's any consolation," Suzie told her calmly, "head shots are very quick."

Fire and pain and terror. She couldn't move, couldn't breath, could only dimly feel the muzzle of the gun pressed to her own temple and there was nothing left but pain and more pain, screaming agony and the animal cries that she couldn't give voice to and the desperate need to do anything, anything at all, to escape the pain. When the gun shot rang out - once, then twice - somewhere far past the pain Gwen could only wonder if she was dead.

She wasn't. The pain burst like a bubble, dropping her to her knees, her lungs gasping for air, her heart beating wild and painful in her chest. The world swam before her eyes, blurred and dizzy, but dimly she could see Suzie, the other woman's face contorted, a silver-worked pistol in one hand, the other clutching at a growing dark stain that was spreading over her shoulder. Beyond her...

Beyond her, Gwen could only barely make out the crumpled shape of a body, swathed in the wool folds of an antique grey coat. Moaning, Gwen tried to master her fingers, her muscles, but everything was numb and distant and there was a droning in her ears like the angry buzz of a thousand bees, hovering dark and whirling at the edges of her vision. Her grip on her gun was slipping, the world tilting precariously, and she couldn't even focus as the distant blur of the other woman turned towards her, arm raising.

The shot reverberated up Gwen's arm, through her shoulder and her teeth and echoed like the rumble of an earthquake through her head. When she could see again, gasping and dizzy, it was to find her own hand raised, the gun in her grasp shaking like a leaf, and Suzie stumbling backwards to fall to her knees. Gwen choked, trying to steady her gun, but the grip slipped through her fingers and the world tilted again, sending her crashing to the concrete. Distantly, dimly, she heard one more shot ring out, and then the darkness engulfed her and the world dropped away.

"What do you think?"

Gwen pulled the heavy weight of her borrowed wool coat closer around her shoulders, tentatively stepping out onto the half crumbled edge of the roof top. It was high up, more than she wanted to think, but the evening lights of the city were brilliant spread out beyond them on one side with the rippling moonlit motion of the waves across the bay on the other.

Beside her, Harkness patted one of the bared girders of the rooftop affectionately. "She used to really be something," he told her, grinning. "The Millennium Center was one of the highlights of Cardiff."

"It's beautiful," Gwen told him truthfully, and for a moment it was, rising up in her mind's eye all smooth lit surfaces and towering lines against a city skyline that was nothing like her own. Sighing, she dropped down, sitting on the concrete, still too shaky to stand for long. Harkness dropped down to crouch beside her, elbows propped on his thighs. There was a smudge of blood, still, staining his forehead and drying in clumps through the fringe of his hair. Gwen started to reach out towards it, then stopped, flinching back, remembering the crumpled shape of a body beneath the coat that was currently draped over her own shoulders. "You were..."

'Yes," Harkness replied simply. Gwen sucked in a sharp breath.

"...How?"

"I can't die," he told her, calm and impossible and terrifying all at once. "Or, I _can_, but I don't stay dead. I can't be hurt, I don't age, and I don't die."

Gwen swallowed dryly. She hurt, still, a dull ache all over, like she'd run five rounds against a training course and come out the worst for it. Harkness has assured her it would pass - "you're going to bruise something spectacular everywhere she moved you," he'd told her, "but you'll be fine."

Suzie Costello was dead. She, Gwen Cooper, was alive, and so, impossibly, was Jack Harkness. She thought that over carefully, everything he had said, and licked her lips. "How?" she repeated. "And how long?"

"Since the War," he said. He tilted his head back, looking up at the overcast sky and out across the city lights. "People were desperate back then. Everything was a weapon, everything went for the war. Everyone fought." He grinned, the expression peeling years off his face. "I was a pilot, I flew fighters. And I had a bit of an edge - auto regeneration." He shook his head, shrugging. If he was cold in just his shirt sleeves, he didn't show it. "Self healing. Just a touch of it. I'd recover faster, get back on my feet faster, heal better. That's what ended up qualifying me for the Program.

"You have to understand," he told her, grin dropping away. "Psychic talents - mojo - was still in its infancy back then. Most people didn't even believe in them, but the army was desperate and willing to take a chance if it could give them any edge at all. So they put us in the Program, let the doctors at us, and when we came out we were the real deal. We could _do_ things, not just parlor tricks. The guys who could light their cigarettes before hand could set entire squadrons on fire. People who could have lifted pebbles and bent spoons before could lift heavy artillery with their minds and I..." he shrugged, spreading his hands. "I got shot down in a burning plane and found out that I couldn't die."

"That was hundreds of years ago," Gwen whispered. Harkness grinned, lopsided.

"Yeah."

Gwen shivered, pulling the coat closer. "And Torchwood?"

"We're the first line of defense against the outside," he told her. "Torchwood is Her Majesty's eyes and ears, the protectors, the inventors... or that's what we're supposed to be."

"Like Suzie?" Gwen breathed, but she knew the answer before Harkness shook his head.

"No," he said firmly. "No, not like that. Never like that." He breathed out, sitting back on his heels. "That... that was the bogeyman of the War, the monster under the bed and in the closet ever after then. The blood mages, the ones who could force the blood in your veins to run backwards, who could stop your heart and burn you up from the inside and kill you dead with a look. I didn't think there were any of them left."

"She said she was doing it for the Crown," Gwen told him.

"Not by my order," he said, his voice cold. "And if I find out whose order she _was_ under then there's going to be hell to pay."

Sighing, Gwen wrapped her arms around her pulled up knees. "What _do_ you do, then?"

Harkness' grin was good humored and impish. "Hunt demons," he told her. "Cardiff... Cardiff opens up to more than just the bay. There's more things that come through here than what comes on and off the docks. That's what we're here for. We deal with strangers, and old things, and new things, and things that haven't even been invented yet. We deal with everything weird, and different, and everything normal people don't want to know about. It's dangerous," he added, almost as an afterthought, "but it's worth it. It's not like anything else."

Gwen gave him a small smile, half lost in the shadows. "You sound like you're recruiting."

"Maybe," Harkness replied archly. "I seem to have an opening on staff. You looking for a job?"

Gwen hummed, looking out over the city lights. "Demon, hmm?" she asked.

"In a manner of speaking," he said. "Well... not really. There's no other dimensions or trade in souls. It's other worlds, other times. There's more things out there than even the Old Believers can dream up, and more coming through every day. Times are changing."

"I believe it," Gwen breathed. She shifted, easing the ache in her shoulder, but it was a good ache, bright and real and alive.

Harkness pushed himself back to his feet, dusting his trousers down, and held out a hand to her. "So?"

Gwen eyed his hand, then reached up and took it. "I'll think about it," she told him.

Harkness smiled, with a warmth that touched his eyes and brightened his face. "I'll look forward to it," he said. "Welcome aboard, Gwen Cooper." She wanted to protest his familiarity and the assumption, but the city lights were spread far and wide, as wide as all of her world had been blown in a space of bare days, and in the end she only let him pull her easily up to her feet, his hand warm and solid and real around her own.

_fin._


End file.
